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For most Americans, weight conversion is a task they rarely perform.
For athletes and sports people, however, it's handy to know how to make weight conversions.
Athletes in other countries don't measure in pounds. In the UK, they use stones and pounds, while in most other countries they use the metric system - that is, kilos. Making weight conversion therefore requires a basic understanding of these systems.
Metric measurements are very logical, based around the weight of respective metric volumes of water. Thus one kilogram is the weight of one liter of water. In imperial measurements (the official name for the system we use), one kilo equals 2.2 pounds.
The origins of the imperial system are lost in the sands of time, but were first officially put into law in the British Weights and Measures Act of 1824. Suffice to say that the British use a measure called a stone (one stone = 14 pounds), plus pounds.
Thus an athlete who weighs in at 180 pounds would weigh 81.6466 kg (kilos), or 12 stone, 12 pounds.
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