Not a day goes by when I don’t wonder why do we get taught to use centimetres instead of millimetres in school. 

No one in the real world uses centimetres! 

And millimetres neatly scales to inches and feet.

And it teaches you about the scale of things. 

Milli means one thousandth. 

Millimetres is used by carpenters, plumbers, electricans, doctors, welders for tumors, plywood, wires, pipes, drain sizes, plates, valve sizes. 

The iPhones shave millimetres off successive generations. 

Milliliters is the best way to measure oil and food as you portion control. 

And millimetres is so much more precise than centimetres. It’s a smaller measure. 

I was off by 0.5 millimetres today on a measure. And off went 8 pipes to a lathe to have their innards shaved off. And introduced to the idea of ovality. Basic idea: most of what we think of as circles in life are ovals. 

Takeaway 

We should probably have measuring things as a subject grades 1 through 12.