I just got back from work, so I have some time to think about these. On Sunday 24 January 2010 19:55:27 Pat Naughtin wrote: > astronomical units,
The AU is a natural unit, so I'd accept that it's too entrenched to change. > atomic energy units, I don't know that unit, but there is the atomic mass unit, also called the dalton. It is a natural unit, though the choice of carbon, instead of oxygen or any other element, was arbitrary. It's tied to the mole, so it's not going away. > Baby birth mass in pounds and ounces, This is not too entrenched to change. Babies are already weighed in grams, even if the parents are told the weight in pounds and ounces. > Dress sizes, I don't know how dresses are sized all over the world, but I think it should be pretty easy to toss out an arbitrary and changing scale and replace it with the European standard of measuring the body in centimeters. > Fahrenheit degrees, In what context? In weather, it would be pretty simple to switch the NWS to provide forecasts in metric as the default system, and people would get used to it in a few days. > Human height in feet and inches, I don't think so, although switching a police database of information about missing people would take some coordination. > kilowatt-hours, The hour is accepted for use with SI. > Light-years, > > parsecs, Why there are two units of length which differ by less than an order of magnitude for use in astronomy I don't know. The parsec is not going away; astronomers measure angles in milliarcseconds, and the distance in parsecs is the reciprocal of the parallax of two observations 1 AU apart. > R-factor, You mean the unit of insulation? I don't know how that's defined, but it should be simple to label the insulation with the metric equivalent. > Shoe sizes. I just brought up www.brannock.com, which has a conversion chart. For some strange reason, the Centimeter, Centimeter Junior, and Mondopoint Brannock devices do not match up. Here's another one: the rack unit. Computer racks have holes at this spacing, computers (for servers, not desktops) are sized to fit them, and rulers are marked in them. As to CGS units, all of them, except some electromagnetic units, are some power of ten times the SI units, so getting rid of them is trivial. The ones that aren't, such as the statvolt, are desuet. Pierre -- li ze te'a ci vu'u ci bi'e te'a mu du li ci su'i ze te'a mu bi'e vu'u ci
