how does the metric system work?
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It’s all about the number 10.
We like to count in 10s because we have 10 fingers. The way we write numbers reflects this: you count 1, 2, 3… all the way up to 9, then you write a “1” for your first 10 and then start again with the next digit: 11, 12, 13… etc.
That’s all great, until you start to measure things in numbers that aren’t 10. There are 16 oz in a lb, so what’s 331 oz in lb? Our number system counts things in 10s, not 16s, so that’s hard to do.
Just imagine how much easier life would be if there were 10 oz in each lb, you’d just divide that 331 oz by 10 to get 33.1 lb.
Also, it’s a hassle remembering how many oz there are in a lb. Is it 14, or 16? Or was that pints in a gallon? And do I mean imperial gallon, a US liquid gallon, or a US dry gallon (all of which are different)? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a consistent number of small things in a big thing: like just 10 oz in a lb and *also* 10 pints in a gallon?
That’s precisely what the metric system does: bigger units are multiples of ten of smaller units, and that’s consistent across all the measurements. Normally the little units are 1000x smaller than the big ones, but the names explicitly tell you that (i.e. “milli” = thousandth, “kilo” = thousand):
1000 mm = 1 m (metres, lenght)
1000 ml = 1 l (litres, volume)
1000 g = 1 kg (Kilograms, mass)
There’s another benefit, which is that many of the units are related. If I asked you precisely how many gallon jugs 32 lb of water would fill that would be tricky, but it’s easy to tell you how many litre bottles 32 kg of water would fill: it’s 32 (because 1 l is the volume of 1 kg of water).
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