How do I convert meters to feet?
Multiply by 3.28084, or divide by 0.3048 if you want it exact, since a foot is defined as 0.3048 m.
10 m is about 32.81 ft. A 1.8 m person is 5.91 ft, which nobody says out loud, so multiply the 0.91 by 12 to get about 10.9 inches: call it 5 ft 11 in.
In your head, multiply by 3 and add 10%. 10 m becomes 33 ft, about half a percent high.
What is a meter?
The meter is the SI base unit of length and is equal to 100 centimeters or 1,000 millimeters. It was originally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator along the meridian through Paris. Since 1983 it has been the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
Where in the world are meters used?
The meter is the legal unit of length in nearly every country. The US, Liberia and Myanmar are the usual three listed as holdouts.
In the EU, goods have to be labelled in metric units, so lengths are given in meters and centimeters. Road signs use kilometers, apart from the UK, which still uses miles.
Asia, Africa and Oceania are essentially all metric, and so are the Americas apart from the US. Canada has been metric since the 1970s, though it still gives your height in feet and inches.
What is a foot?
The foot is an imperial and US unit of length equal to 12 inches, or exactly 30.48 centimeters. It is a third of a yard and 1/5,280 of a mile.
The foot began as the length of a human foot, and so differed from place to place and from person to person. The modern international foot was fixed at exactly 0.3048 meters by agreement in 1959.
People's height is given in feet and inches in the US and UK, and aircraft altitude is given in feet nearly everywhere, metric countries included.
Where in the world are feet used?
In the US feet are the everyday unit for height, room sizes and building work. It is the only large country that still hasn't gone metric for most of these.
Beyond the US, people's heights in the UK and Canada are given in feet and inches, and property in the UK, Canada and India is measured in square feet.
The one place feet are used almost worldwide is aircraft altitude, even in countries that are otherwise metric.
Why are feet used in aviation?
Aircraft altitude is measured in feet nearly everywhere because early aviation standards were set largely by the US and UK. The International Civil Aviation Organization still lists the foot as an accepted unit for altitude.
A flight level is the altitude in hundreds of feet, so FL350 means 35,000ft. China is the main exception, as it uses meters for altitude.
Cruising aircraft are kept 1,000ft apart vertically, which comes to 304.8 meters if you insist.
Switching aviation to meters has been discussed but never done. Every altimeter, chart and procedure would have to change at once.