What are the advantages of the decimal system?

Answer 1

The decimal system or metric system is incredibly simpler than the empirical system. To convert between different units is very very easy nearly all the time. To change units one usually just multiplies or divides by a multiple of ten. How many inches in a rod? How many ounces in a gallon? Who cares? There's 100centimetres to metre. There's 1 000 000 litres to a megalitre. There's 1 000 000 000 000 picojoules to a joules. But the advantages don't stop there. The metric system (internationally called the SI:Syteme International) aims to standardise all basic units of measurement to become representative of some universal natural phenomena. How long was the king's foot EXACTLY??? Well 1 metre is the distance a photon of light travels in one 299 792 458 th of a second. A second is related to the vibrations of cesium atoms. Before this system everything was based on certain objects like somebody's foot or somebody's length of platinum alloy rod. Having a good basis for standard units gives better meaning to combined units like force and velocity. One Newton is the force it requires to accelerate 1kilogram at a rate of 1 metre per second per second. I couldn't imagine converting ounces and inches to pounds and feet here, but grams to tonnes and metres to millimetres would be trivial.