Metric in the United States.

I do not remember if I mentioned it but I am visiting Germany for my nieces wedding.  It is hard to miss all the electrical lines crisscrossing the country side.  Many of the trains are powered by electricityl lines overhead, in much the same way they did a long time ago.

I realized we do use metric in the United States but we often times don’t give it much thought. If you ask most people to give examples of how metric is used here, you would get funny looks from people because they have not connected metric with this country.  So let’s look at some places we see it here.




1. Most power bills shows the amount of electricity used is in KWH or kilowatt hours.  Kilowatts or 100. Kilo is usually associated with grams, liters, or centimeters. Every bill will have this somewhere.

2.  When you buy soda pop, you can buy the drink in one or two liter sized bottles.  No one thinks that is strange.

3.  Most prepared foods have their weight in both American and metric measurements. If you do not believe me, check your cans of soda.

4.  Most cars sold in the United States have speed listed in both mph and mph. I’ve had to use the mph when I’ve driven through Canada.

5. Most people including myself have a set of metric tools somewhere around the house for when you work on your foreign car.

6. Many track and field events along with swimming and other sporting events are recorded in metric because competitors must be using the same unit to compare trials accurately.

So when we teach our unit on metric, we need to create an activity which would have students researching how and where metric is used in this country. In other words, they need to learn they are not totally isosolated and do use it.

Maybe this way if and when the United States joins the rest of the world in being metric, the conversion will not be that hard because students will already be halfway there.  Let me know what you think, I would love to hear.