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The English word "salary" comes from the Latin word for which substance?
How the World Agreed on a Metre
Every unit you use daily was decided by somebody, and several were decided badly.
About this topic
Measurement feels like a fact of nature and is entirely a human agreement. Someone had to decide how long a metre was, and their decision — based on a survey of the distance from the North Pole to the equator — turned out to contain an error that was simply kept for consistency. These questions cover where the common units came from, what they are now defined against, and the historical accidents that survive inside them. The most durable ones are usually the ones that were tied to something reproducible rather than to a king's body.
Questions & answers
How the World Agreed on a Metre: all 10 questions and answers
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
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1The metre was originally defined as a fraction of what?
- A The length of a pendulum beating once a second
- B The width of the Seine
- C The height of a French cathedral
- D The distance from the North Pole to the equator Correct
Answer: D. The distance from the North Pole to the equator
Why: It was set at one ten-millionth of that distance in the 1790s. The survey contained a small error, which was kept rather than corrected.
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2A second is now defined using what?
- A A pendulum of fixed length
- B The Earth's orbit
- C The vibrations of a caesium atom Correct
- D A fraction of a day
Answer: C. The vibrations of a caesium atom
Why: Atomic definitions were adopted because the Earth's rotation is not perfectly regular and is gradually slowing.
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3Why are there 60 minutes in an hour?
- A It matches the lunar cycle
- B It descends from Babylonian base-60 counting Correct
- C It divides the day into equal shifts
- D Napoleon standardised it
Answer: B. It descends from Babylonian base-60 counting
Why: Sixty divides evenly by many numbers, which made fractions easy before decimals existed. The same system gives us 360 degrees in a circle.
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4A nautical mile is based on what?
- A One minute of latitude Correct
- B The length of a ship
- C The distance visible to the horizon
- D A thousand oar strokes
Answer: A. One minute of latitude
Why: That makes it directly useful for navigation, since a degree of latitude is sixty nautical miles anywhere on Earth.
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5The kilogram was, until recently, defined by what?
- A A volume of pure water
- B The mass of a fixed number of atoms
- C A pendulum measurement
- D A physical metal cylinder kept in France Correct
Answer: D. A physical metal cylinder kept in France
Why: The prototype was found to be drifting slightly against its copies, so in 2019 the definition was moved to a physical constant instead.
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6Fahrenheit set zero on his scale using what?
- A The freezing point of pure water
- B The temperature of the human body
- C A freezing mixture of ice, water and salt Correct
- D The coldest recorded winter
Answer: C. A freezing mixture of ice, water and salt
Why: It was the lowest temperature he could reliably reproduce. Celsius chose the freezing and boiling points of water instead.
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7The imperial foot is traditionally said to derive from what?
- A A ship's plank
- B The length of a human foot Correct
- C A Roman standard rod
- D The width of a paving slab
Answer: B. The length of a human foot
Why: Which is why it varied between regions for centuries before being standardised by statute.
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8A light-year measures what?
- A Distance Correct
- B Time
- C Brightness
- D The age of a star
Answer: A. Distance
Why: It is the distance light travels in a year, roughly 9.5 trillion kilometres. Astronomers more often use parsecs.
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9Which country officially uses the imperial system for most everyday measurement?
- A Canada
- B Australia
- C Ireland
- D The United States Correct
Answer: D. The United States
Why: Liberia and Myanmar are the other two states that have not formally adopted metric. The US does define its units against metric standards.
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10Paper sizes in the A series share which property?
- A They are based on the golden ratio
- B They match imperial sizes exactly
- C Halving one gives the next size, keeping the same proportions Correct
- D Each is exactly half the weight of the last
Answer: C. Halving one gives the next size, keeping the same proportions
Why: The ratio is the square root of two, which is what makes scaling between sizes lossless. A0 has an area of one square metre.
Frequently asked questions about How the World Agreed on a Metre
How many questions are in How the World Agreed on a Metre?
How the World Agreed on a Metre has 10 questions and takes about 6 minutes to finish. It is rated Medium and sits in our General Knowledge category.
How is How the World Agreed on a Metre scored?
Each of the 10 correct answers adds 10 XP, up to 100 XP for a clean run. Wrong answers cost you nothing, and your full question-by-question review is shown at the end.
Are the answers to How the World Agreed on a Metre explained?
Yes. All 10 questions carry a written explanation of why the correct answer is right, so the quiz works as a study sheet as well as a test.
Can I replay How the World Agreed on a Metre?
Yes, as often as you like. The questions and the answer options are reshuffled on each run, and you can use Practice Mistakes afterwards to retry only the ones you missed. No account is needed to play.
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