CHAPTER VI 

 THE MEASUREMENT OF MATTER 



36. Standards. Many times each day we have occasion to 

 measure matter in various ways. Such questions as how 

 much, how long, or how heavy, are continually on our 

 tongues. Nearly all buying and selling involves questions of 

 the measurement of matter. The system of measurement 

 with which we are, at present, most familiar makes use of 

 such units as feet, yards, miles, quarts, bushels, tons, pounds, 

 and the like, and these are subdivided entirely without regard 

 to uniformity, so that we have to remember a great variety of 

 special numbers, containing fractions equally lacking in uni- 

 formity. There are, for instance, 5^ yards in a rod, 24% 

 cubic feet in a perch, while the numbers that we use in square 

 measurement are 144, 9, 30J4, 160, and 640. On this account 

 it has always been a difficult task to learn the different tables of 

 measurement, and to work problems in them. Even scien- 

 tists were bothered by these difficult tables and long ago 

 invented a better system. This latter is called the metric 

 system, and it is the one in common use in practically all 

 civilized countries except England and the United States. In 

 our own country, the use of this system has been legal since 

 1866, and though the old, or English, system is still the com- 

 mon one, the new system is fast gaining in favor, and is 

 practically the only one now used in scientific laboratories. So 

 important has the metric system become, that in 1893 two of its 

 units, the meter and the kilogram, were adopted as the legal 

 fundamental standards, and our yard and pound are now 

 actually standardized by comparison with them. 



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