Meet the metric system’s newest prefixes: ronna-, quetta-, ronto- and quecto-. Science News spoke with Richard Brown, head of metrology at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, England, ...

As ever more digital data is created and stored, the world needs more unit measurements to keep up with the ever-expanding numbers. To do so, the 27th General Conference on Weights and Measures on ...

The United States is one of just three countries that "prefers" imperial measurements over the international metric standard. The motivation why has less to do with official policy than you might ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. 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 ...

The metric system's governing body has added some new terms to help describe massive amounts of data. The General Conference on Weights and Measures last week added the prefixes "ronna" and "quetta." ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American I’ve met a lot of people and learned a lot ...

Have you ever noticed that systems of measurement tends to change when you leave the United States? Weight is typically measured in kilograms instead of pounds, distance is measured in kilometers over ...