Metric Units for the Solar System is an exploration of our relationship with the systems of ‘standardized units’ we have created to order society; examining the various tensions implicit in the ...

The week of Oct. 10 – that's 10/10 – is National Metric Week because the metric system is based on powers of 10. To change from one unit to another within the system, one has only to move the decimal ...

When comparing or combining an area or volume it is important to measure the objects using the same units. Without converting the areas into the same unit, it might be difficult to tell, for example, ...

Confoundingly, the U.S. has stood on the sidelines for centuries as the rest of the world has adopted the metric system as its standard not only in science but in everyday life. (Meanwhile, we ...

The metric system is on track for a mass makeover. In an effort to provide accurate measurements at all scales, scientists are preparing to redefine four basic units by the end of 2018. The shift will ...

Metric units are universally followed in most countries. The metric system was first introduced in France in 1799 and since then has been further refined and has become an international decimalised ...

Most people think the U.S. never adopted the metric system - but that’s not the whole story. Long before Europe standardized its measurements, America quietly implemented a system based on the very ...

Americans have long used diverse weights and measures, reflecting their diverse origins. From colonial times, converting from one unit to another was part of courses in commercial arithmetic. The ...

The inch, based on the length of a thumb, and the foot based on, well, the length of a foot, are inherently associated with human scale (Getty/iStock) Sign up to our free Brexit newsletter for our ...

Not long ago, I was writing a story for this very magazine about the delicate extraterrestrial dance of a U.S. spacecraft around a potato-shaped asteroid named Eros (see “Hang a Right at Jupiter,” Dec ...