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.
