TABLE 1 English Units of Measurement

Unit Systems FUNDAMENTAL DIMENSIONS Rev. 0 Page 3 CP-01 TABLE 1 English Units of Measurement Length Mass Time Inch Ounce * Second * Foot * Pound Minute Yard Ton Hour Mile Day Month Year * Standard unit of measure The English system is presently used in the field of engineering and throughout the United States. The foot-pound-second (FPS) system is the usual unit system used in the U.S. when dealing with physics. Over the years there have been movements to standardize units so that all countries, including the United States, will adopt the SI system. The SI system is made up of two related systems, the meter-kilogram-second (MKS) system and the centimeter-gram-second (CGS) system. The MKS and CGS systems are much simpler to use than the English system because they use a decimal-based system in which prefixes are used to denote powers of ten. For example, one kilometer is 1000 meters, and one centimeter is one one-hundredth of a meter. The English system has odd units of conversion. For example, a mile is 5280 feet, and an inch is one twelfth of a foot.