I was listening to some programmes on the BBC this evening and I heard a lot
of references to feet/inches/pounds/stones. The country is offically metric,
its even illegal to trade in anything other than metric units, but you can't
stop people from using the older units because they're more natural, they
tend to relate directly to our human dimensions (e.g. -- did you know that a
mile is 1000 ('mille') paces of a Roman soldier, each pace in their
terminology being two steps).Metric makes more sense for serious scientific and engineering work. One of the best kept secrets in the US is that the place is really metric. They do hide it well -- if you go into a hardware store and you have to really search for metric fasteners, that sort of thing -- but its really just a veneer. The only serious holdouts are the HVAC trade, they use British Thermal Units and 'tons' to rate heating and cooling equipment. They're a real nuisance to work with. The only unforgivable thing is that they inflict FPS units on the schoolkids in science classes. You've got a few -- a precious few -- teachers who will work SI but the majority of instruction around here doesn't use it. Its archaic. (And they're not consistent -- if they were then they'd be using units like 'jars' for capacitance instead of microfarads.) I'm bi-lingual. I don't care if my handlaunch is 60" or 152cm. 60" is less of a mouthful in conversation. I also have 2meter and 3meter ships (which I don't call 78" and 118"). Martin Usher RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off.
