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Confused by Celsius?    Mystified by metres?

Think you don’t understand metric? — Think again!

Welcome to the Think Metric website — the quick and easy way
to learn and understand everyday metric measurements.

The metric system has been taught in British schools since the mid-1970s and we are surrounded by metric measurements in everyday life. However, a lot of British people still think in inches, feet, pounds, stones and pints; and often have difficulty in understanding metric measurements.

This website provides an introduction to the metric system and includes a set of metric “visual clues” for a whole range of everyday objects. This will enable you to instantly recognise almost any metric measurement you may encounter.

Explore the site now to find out how to use the metric system, and just how easy it really is. When you start to think metric, you will be amazed at just how helpful it can be.

Basics

Metric Basics Introduction The metric system was first devised in the late 1700s as a means of standardising and simplifying the many weights and measures that existed at that time. Not only did similar sounding measures differ from country to country, but regional or even town-to-town differences were commonplace. The metric system was rapidly adopted… Continue reading Basics

Principles

Principles of the Metric System Everything in metric is based on sensible and easy to understand principles, i.e. that prefixes for units are based on 10, 100, 1000, 1 million, 1 billion, or fractions of one tenth, one hundredth, one thousandth, one millionth, and so on. There are base units, and other units used in… Continue reading Principles

Benefits

Benefits of using Metric Worldwide Standard Unlike some non-metric measurements, which can vary even between countries, metric measurements are set by international agreement and therefore are the same wherever you happen to be. You can be confident that a metre, kilogram or litre will be the same whether you are in the UK, Canada, France,… Continue reading Benefits