# Units of Distance, Pressure, and Temperature [closed]

I need to store data.

I'd like to store them in Metric units and use a tool to convert them to and from other units that these data points will be displayed in.

As the title states, my constraints are Distance, Pressure, and Temperature.

Distance I know, but it is added here as an example: I store the data in meters and convert to feet where needed.

What are the metrics unit for storing Pressure and Temperature?

Further, I am assuming here that metric units would be the most universal. If there is a more universal unit for Distance, Pressure or Temperature, please let me know.

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## closed as off topic by Manishearth♦Dec 22 '12 at 21:56

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According to wikipedia "Metric system" is quite a vague term (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system#Variants). Do you mind using SI? (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units) –  Yrogirg Jul 22 '12 at 19:23

Assuming SI units, here's Wikipedia's list of base units, including metre (unit of length) and kelvin (unit of temperature).

There's another list of derived units, including pascal (unit of pressure) and degree Celsius (another unit of temperature with identical scale but different zero point).

More universal would be a system of natural units, but that's probably not a good fit for your problem domain.

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Yeah, distance measured in the number of Plank constants might be a bit much. :) –  jp2code Jul 22 '12 at 23:11

jp2code, basically you need to decide what metric system you want to use. For example in engineering and science SI system is common. But in SI temperature is measured in Kelvins, whereas ordinary people use degrees Celsius.

However, as far as I understood you are to write a program to convert between the units. In that case there should be special libraries in your programming language for that purpose. Given value in one measurement system they can convert it to the value in any other measurement system. So use them and their documentation, if you have questions on that matter http://stackoverflow.com/ is a better place to ask.

Personally, I use my TI-89 calculator to convert between units.

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I am writing the library. Whatever unit is most universal will be the base unit that is stored and what other units are displayed from. –  jp2code Jul 22 '12 at 23:10

The universal unit you might be talking about are the SI Units. These units are the standards in measurement and universally accepted. Metric unit is a diverse term for metric units can be converted from one unit to another in terms of decimals. For example, grams and kilograms are both metric units but the standard unit for mass is the kilogram.

For distance SI unit is the meter. For temperature, kelvin. For pressure, we use pascals which is equivalent to a newton per meter squared.

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