With the columns I write being on the internet, they are read across the country and around the world. Because of that, I have received some interesting responses to my recent column on the metric ...

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 United States is one of the last holdouts ...

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 ...

In prehistoric times, not much needed to be measured. You ate what you found and lived where you could. The advent of agriculture and civilization, however, necessitated a way for people to measure ...

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 ...