Shopping for goods, cooking or doing almost any project at home requires some type of measurement. In the United States, you need to know cups, inches and quarts and how to convert one measure to another. You also can benefit from knowing metric measures and conversions.
In the U.S. as well as in Canada people use a mix of customary and metric units of weights and measures, so learning both makes life easier. You can find a liter bottle of soda in the same grocery store that sells milk by the gallon or quart, so you will benefit from understanding what those measures mean. However, the customary measures, such as inches, gallons and miles, still dominate in America, despite a push starting in the 1970s for metric conversion.
You will use standard units of capacity or volume to follow any standard U.S. recipe or cooking directions, along with choosing most foods or products in a store. Some of the most common capacity or volume measures in the customary system include teaspoons, tablespoons, fluid ounces, pints, quarts and gallons. Some common conversions include eight ounces in a cup, two pints in a quart and four quarts in a gallon. You will find milk commonly sold by the gallon or subunits of it, soda in 12-ounce cans and motor oil sold by the quart.
Whether you want to build a house, do a sewing project or measure for a new carpet, you need to use standard linear units of measure, such as inches and feet. If you take a drive, you will want to know how many miles it takes to reach your destination, as Americans have speed limit signs posted in miles. The customary measures of length used in America date back to a system comparing them to parts of the body, such as an inch for the width of a human thumb and a foot equal to the approximate length of a human foot. Three feet equal a yard in this system, and Americans express long distances in miles. One mile equals 5,280 feet or about 1.6 kilometers when converted to the metric system.
Stepping on a scale, weighing vegetables at the market or buying many items in bulk requires a knowledge of pounds and ounces, standard U.S. measures of weight. Things like flour, fruits and vegetables and sugar sell by the pound, which equals 16 ounces by weight. Lighter items, like cereal or grains, often sell by the ounce.