I think the US is stuck in the primitive imperial units of measures and they have no clue how to bail out. I don't know what other country uses Miles, Pounds, Ounces, Gallons, Fahrenheit...other than the US. The US seems to always finds itself in a dilemma where it discovers/invents a technology then gets stuck in the original 1st generation after building large expensive infrastructure for that technology. There the rest of the world moves on and improves the technology to better, faster and more efficient leaving leave the US behind at the start line. Examples include inferior NTSC tv system, PCSS mobile phone system, 110V domestic electric voltage, imperial measurement units. I heard that the US is really catching up on the rest of the world with GSM mobile phone system. Kenya is the only country I know that still uses Medium Wave for radio signal transmission.
There are only three: The US and, wait for it, Liberia and Myanmar (formerly Burma).
Throwing a wrench into your mental gears here I go...
Snippets from Quora:
... since 1985, everything is done officially in the U.K., including weighing packages, vehicles, and people (like at the doctor’s office) is done in metric units, i.e., kg.
Unlike the U.S., however, the U.K. also uses a unit called the “stone,” equal to 14 lbs, and is usually used to state a person's body mass, along with the remaining number of pounds. I.e. someone in the U.K. might have a body mass of 13 stone 4 pounds, which corresponds to approx. 84 kg in metric units, or 186 lbs in the U.S. and Canada.
I think pounds in the U.K. might be informally be used for buying meat (i.e. like at a butcher shop), but pound in the U.K. sense primarily denotes to the British currency, the Pound Sterling. Also, anything under 14 lbs (i.e. a stone) in the U.K. will be simply quoted in pounds, and not usually stone, e.g “I lost 7 lbs in two weeks.”
Anyway, I think most younger people in the U.K. would measure their body mass in kg, while primarily older people would weight their body mass in stone, and the remainder in pounds.
Confusing, I know, but that’s what British imperial measures are, and that’s what you get when a country insists on using obsolete Imperial measures and Metric measures simultaneously.
Also, Imperial measurements are “officially” obsolete. The only two systems used throughout the world today are SI units and U.S. Customary units. U.S. units are based on an older set of English units, used over 50 years before the conception of the Imperial system was established in England, which was in 1824. That’s why the U.S. and U.K. have different sized gallons, the U.S. gallon is based on the old Queen Anne Wine Gallon, which was established in 1707 during the reign of Queen Anne in England, and the newer Imperial Gallon was established during the Imperial Weights & Measures Act of 1824, and is approximately based on the volume occupied by 10 lbs. of distilled water @ 62 °F, which only took effect in the United Kingdom, and not in the USA.
How many kg are in a tonne in the UK?
The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in the imperial, United States customary and other systems of measurement. Various definitions have been used; the most common today is the international avoirdupois pound, which is legally defined as exactly 0.45359237 kilograms, and which is divided into 16 avoirdupois ounces.
The international standard symbol for the avoirdupois pound is lb; an alternative symbol is lbm (for most pound definitions), (chiefly in the U.S.), and ℔ or (specifically for the apothecaries' pound).
The unit is descended from the Roman libra (hence the abbreviation "lb").
A lot of people in the UK use both.
All supermarkets do their weights in grams and kilograms, but a lot of people still use stones and pounds for their personal body weight. Some butchers use both kg and lbs depending on the customers that come in.
Older generations are more likely to use lbs, especially with things like cake making, as there are rhymes for how to weigh the ingredients that doesn't make sense in grams.
I try to make myself aware of both lbs and kgs - when talking to someone from Europe, it makes it easier to compare birth weights, as they are still weighed in lbs but give a kg translation - and Europeans tend to use kgs exclusively.
Both, and sometimes together.
For instance, we buy our petrol and diesel in litres, but measure the rate at which our cars consume it in miles per gallon.
We buy draught beer in pints and half-pints, but wine and spirits in millilitres, across the same bar.
I’m on diet right now; I track the weight I seem to have stopped losing in stones, pounds and ounces, but follow carb-free, fat-free, joy-free recipes laid out in grammes, which is also how prepackaged food in supermarket is sold, although a local butcher or greengrocer will almost certainly sell you things using either system.
Normally kg or g. For example, when packaged food is sold by weight it will be labelled in kg and usually the package will be a round number such a 500g or 1.5kg. However, loose food (e.g. fruit or vegetables) can be presented dual priced in in £ per lb and £ per kg. Of course products can also be sold by count rather than weight.
We use both.
Most of our supermarket items are measured in kgs.
Lots of older folks (roughly over 50s) were brought up using lbs and have not changed.
I work with old folks in a hospital for exercise rehab, when I tell them what weights we are using, I always do it in lbs.
When I train in a gym, I use kgs.
What do you mean by “countries … use”? Governments of countries may use …; governments of countries may legislate that certain groups use …; industries in a country may use …; ordinary citizens or residents of countries may use …. Each of these three may have different answers, and generally countries as a whole do not use particular measurement units.
The United States is the most well-known and most populous country in which pounds measuring about 454 g are very heavily used and likely the predominant unit of mass used in the country,
How would you describe your weight in Europe? Would a person's weight be given in pounds or kilograms?
The metric system is standard across Europe, so a person’s weight is expressed in kilograms. Tell someone your weight in pounds in Germany or France and you will not be understood.
The only exception to this is the UK, where both the metric system and imperial measures are used. However, British people never express their weight in pounds when using imperial measures because they always use stones, a unit equivalent to fourteen pounds. Someone who weighs 148 pounds in the US would therefore weigh “about ten and half stone” in the UK, or “ten stone eight” if they are being precise.
Suppose you were creating a set of weights from scratch and all you had was a set of scales and an object that somehow (perhaps by Royal decree) had an agreed weight of one “pound.”
Balance it against sand in the other pan. You have a pound of sand.
Split that equally in half between the pans. Two lots of 8 ounces. Make a permanent 8-ounce weight.
Repeat to get 4 ounce, two ounce, one ounce etc weights until you have a complete set.
You see why that makes sense? They’re whole numbers. Try it with metric and you only get as
Does the UK use inches or centimeters?
Officially the UK does not use centimetre it is not a “British Metric Unit”because
It is a hundredth of a metre and the SI or International System uses multiples of 1000
At 40% of an inch it is too close to to be safely used.
The French and other foreigners use centimetres as a legacy unit and in the same way that in the UK many people relate to feet and inches rather than their metric equivalent. (See edit note)
The SI unit of length is the metre which can be divided by 1000 to give the millimetre and multiplied by 1000 to give a kilometre. These units are used in the UK but distance and speeds o
Which countries use kilograms and which use pounds?
Most countries in the World use Kilograms (kg)
The U.S. is really the only industrialized nation that officially uses pounds today, most other industrialized nations have metricated and switched over to kilograms.
Other countries which partially (but do not officially) use pounds include: Liberia, Burma, Canada, United Kingdom (partially), Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Samoa, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Jamaica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Macau.
And of course, many other Commonwealth nations which previously used Imperial Units (e.g. New Zealand and Australia) still informally will measure in pounds, especially for baby weight.
A yard is a tall man’s stride if he’s not loafing. IOW, it’s about as long a unit as is useful if you’re counting strides to keep track of where you are. A meter is ten percent longer. Thus not as useful.
A pound is smaller than a kilogram and that makes it more useful if you’re using small amounts and need a smaller unit. Easier than price per kilo when you want what amounts to maybe half a kilo or something.
Are pounds (lbs) used for weight in the UK? Do people in the United Kingdom measure their weight in pounds or just in stones (14 lbs)?
Pounds alone are no longer used for much at all, except for weight of a person as part of a stone. So my weight is 12 stone 8. Okay 12 stone 12. So when a British person loses weight they usually think of their weight loss in pounds, not kilos.
Otherwise, pounds are barely used, and only informally. The weight of food products is always in kilos, including local street markets where the labels on produce will be in £ per kg. However if, as many older people do, you asked for “two pounds of potatoes” a market vendor would know exactly what you mean. A very young and/or clueless vendor might think you mean £2-worth of potatoes, but it’s unlikely.
Which is more accurate in measurement; pound or kilogram?
As has been stated in other posts, they do not measure the same thing, pounds being force and kilograms being mass, but in common usage, kilogram is used as a unit of force (1 Kg mass at 1 G), and I believe that is the intended usage in the question. If you insist on using whole units, pounds will have higher resolution than kilograms, but resolution has no bearing on accuracy. We have this amazing mathematical trick called fractions! We can set the resolution wherever we need to represent the data we have.
Why do some countries use pounds instead of kilograms, given that well over 90 % of the countries in the world regularly use kilograms and associated units instead of pounds?
Many people list the United States, Liberia, and Burma/Myanmar as the holdouts. I would say the official switchover to the metric kilograms from the old pounds has not been entirely successful in the UK and India, so you will still commonly hear pounds and, in the UK, the stone. On the other hand, from what I understand, Liberians are actually mostly using metric units—they just have not made it official by law.
How does one really convert lbs to kg, since lbs is a unit of weight which uses the force of gravity and kg is mass?
A pound (lb) is a unit of mass and is defined interms of kilograms. It is legally defined as exactly 0.45359237 kg. So this is the conversion factor to use when converting between pounds and kg.
If you are referring to weight (which is a force) you really mean to use the unit pounds-force (lb-f). People either don’t realise the difference, take a shortcut and abbreviate ponds-force to pounds or very oten, dont know the difference between mass and weight.
A pound force will be a force equal to mg. ie the weight of a one pound mass in gravitational field at your location. The gravitational field strength will be about 9.8 N/kg 0r about 32 lb-f/lb.
And this from the university of Nottingham
Poleni...
