MEASUREMENT TABLES (CONVERSIONS)Ever tried cooking from a foreign cook book? or estimating the size of a house in square feet or square meters? Tough jobs which may lead to disastrous results if you are not in the know of converting measurements.
Of course, the advantage of the old measurements like inches and feet (not to mention measurements like an arm's length) was that they were readily (even literally) at hand, but the trouble was that the US and UK measurements did not always correspond, nor did the measurements in other countries, thus a Danish mile was 7 kilometers whereas a Swedish mile was 10 kilometers. So, although the meter is an artificial conception that grew out of the French Revolution in 1789, it is good to have a standard yardstick. Same thing for volume, weight, and speed (they say that one of the US rockets failed because "mph" hadn't been turned into "kilometers per hour").
But athough the US supposedly went "metric" a few years back (and the UK long before that), old habits die hard, so here's a couple of tables that may help you convert measurements back and forth.CONVERSION FROM U.S. CUSTOMARY TO METRIC UNITS
WHEN YOU KNOW MULTIPLY BY TO FIND inches 25.4 millimeters inches 2.54 centimeters feet 30.48 centimeters yards 0.91 meters miles 1.61 kilometers teaspoons 4.93 milliliters tablespoons 14.79 milliliters fluid ounces 29.57 milliliters cups 0.24 liters pints 0.47 liters quarts 0.97 liters gallons 3.79 liters cubic feet 0.028 cubic meters cubic yards 0.76 cubic meters ounces 28.35 grams pounds 0.45 kilograms short tons (2,000 lbs) 0.91 metric tons square inches 6.45 square centimeters square feet 0.09 square meters square yards 0.84 square meters square miles 2.60 square kilometers acres 0.40 hectares CONVERSION FROM METRIC TO U.S. CUSTOMARY UNITS
WHEN YOU KNOW MULTIPLY BY TO FIND millimeters 0.04 inches centimeters 0.39 inches meters 3.28 feet meters 1.09 yards kilometers 0.62 miles milliliters 0.20 teaspoons milliliters 0.06 tablespoons milliliters 0.03 fluid ounces liters 1.06 quarts liters 0.26 gallons liters 4.23 cups liters 2.12 pints cubic meters 35.52 cubic feet cubic centimeters 1.35 cubic yards grams 0.035 ounces kilograms 2.21 pounds metric ton (1,000 kg) 1.10 short ton square centimeters 0.16 square inches square meters 1.20 yards square kilometers 0.39 square miles hectares 2.47 acres