I consider myself pretty conversant in metric units. I know that 20 kilograms is 44 pounds (double it and add 10%) and that five kilometers is a little over three miles (I’ve, uh, run a lot of 5Ks).

Oh, America. You do so confuse the rest of the world, with your “pounds per square inch” and “cups”, instead of sensible ...

If you live in one of the few countries that use the Fahrenheit temperature scale (that would be the United States, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, Liberia, Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia ...

The Kelvin (K), named after British physicist William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), is the thermodynamic temperature unit in the International System of Units (SI). It is derived from the third law of ...

If you’ve ever traveled abroad or heard a story about a cold blast or a heat wave hitting another country, you've likely heard the temperature in degrees Celsius. A hot day would be close to 40 ...

Every once in a while, you may see a temperature in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. Your car thermometer may revert to the wrong system and you don’t know how to change it, for example. Since almost ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...