metric system

Introduction

The metric system is essential for daily life, since we need it at all times, multiples and submultiples are handled when you want to buy or sell any object.

Throughout history, notorious changes have been made in the International System of Units and it is important to keep updating ourselves so as not to make mistakes when making a conversion, since this is the problem in many calculations.

The International Measurement System comprises a great variety of units, for its application in a specific field, standards have been created as: units of length , mass , time , electric intensity , temperature , luminous intensity , quantity of substance were created to establish an order when handling these areas.

imperial to metric conversion services

objective

That the student acquires knowledge about multiples and submultiples, conversion of units, so that he has no difficulty in developing in the different areas in which the application of the International System of measurements is handled.

Metric system

It was implanted by the First General Conference of Weights and Measures (Paris, 1889); it was intended to look for a unique system of units for everyone and thus facilitate the scientific, cultural, commercial, and data exchange ... Until then, each country, and even

.

Each region had its own system of units; to often the same name represented a different value, Countries according to their adoption date of the metric system from one place to another. An example is the rod, measure of length that is equivalent to 0.8359 m, if it is the Castilian rod or 0.7704 m, if it is the rod of Aragon.

From the dawn of humanity, the need to have a system of measures for exchanges was seen. According to scientific studies, units of measurement began to be used around 5,000 BC

The Egyptians took the human body as the basis for the units of length, such as: the lengths of the forearms, feet, hands or fingers. The elbow, whose distance is the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger of the hand, was the unit of length most used in antiquity, in such a way that the Egyptian royal elbow is the oldest known unit of length . The elbow was inherited by Greeks and Romans, although they did not coincide in their lengths.

Different measurement systems proliferated until the 19th century; This often involved conflicts between merchants, citizens and tax officials. As the exchange of goods spread across Europe, the political powers appreciated the possibility of a system of measures being normalized.

The first official adoption of the system occurred in France in 1791 after the French Revolution of 1789. The Revolution, with its official ideology of pure reason facilitated this change and proposed as a fundamental unit the meter (in Greek, measure ). Lavoisier went on to say of him that "nothing greater or more sublime has come out of the hands of man than the metric system" .

On the other hand, scientists had been defining magnitudes independently of the various units of measurement in force in each country; thus they defined the density of a matter as the quantity of volume of pure water that balances a unit of volume of that matter in the balance (water was chosen because it was present in any laboratory). Thus, the first density definition was a unit to dimensional, independent of the unit of volume used because it is relative density.

O    DECIMAL MULTIPLES

All multiples and submultiples of the basic units would be decimal powers. Neither the fractions would be by halves, as is the case at present with the fractions of an inch, nor would the multiples have different relations than powers of ten, as is the case of the foot that equals twelve inches. It should be noted that the decimalization is still imposed in countries that use other bases of measurement, such as the case of the decimalization of the Pound both the British and the Irish in 1971 or the even more recent (2000-2001) decimalization of the fractions in the prices of the shares in the stock exchanges of the United States.

The metric system also defined a unit of decimal base for the measurement of angles, the gon or degree in which the right angle is divided into 100 gons instead of the 90 of the sexagesimal system, and where each gon is divided into 100 minutes and every minute in 100 seconds. In fact, the kilometer is the length of a terrestrial meridian arc spanning one minute (of a latitude gon.This is similar to the definition of a nautical mile, which is the length of an arc of one sexagesimal minute of latitude.

On the contrary, the metric system did not define any decimal unit of time measurement because this was part of the republican calendar in which one day was divided into 10 hours and fell into disuse along with it. also see about: Imperial to metric conversion services.

o    Common prefixes

All derived units would use the same set of prefixes to indicate each multiple. For example, kilo would be used both for multiples of weight ( kilogram ) and length ( kilometer ) in both cases indicating 1,000 base units. This did not prevent the continued use of already ingrained units such as the ton of 20 quintals (2,000 Spanish pounds or 920 kg) then converted into a metric ton, 1,000 kg, or the quintal of 100 Spanish pounds, passed to a 100 kg metric quintal.

In the Anglo-Saxon countries, old units such as the ton of 20 quintals (2,500 lb or 1,150.20 kg) or the quintal of 4 arrobas (45.36 kg) are still used