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 ...

December 23, 2025, marks the 50th anniversary of the Metric Conversion Act, designed to bring US weights and measures in line with the rest of the world.

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 ...

Most Americans believe the country rejected the metric system decades ago. In reality, US measurements like feet, pounds, and ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

A unified measuring system allows people from different nations to trade with one another without doubting what they are getting. Many attempts to make units of measure standard have come and gone ...

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 ...