I was in Albertsons last night to purchase beer after a day spent touring a steel mill in Jewett Texas.
I can across Dr Pepper in 0.5 litre bottles. On the side facing me was metric only labels. When I stopped and nearly fainted from shock, (it had been a hard day on the hearth - speaking metaphorically) I turned the 6 pack around. On the other side was both unit systems. It looked to me like they had two sets of artwork one for metric alone and one for (come lets give Fred a break I never actually heard him use feet or inches or pounds on the show.) colonial English. Anyway it relieved a slight head ache as I was laughing fairly hard at the incongruently of it all.
All reinforcing bar in the US is labelled in metric no FFU. But is still called up by the Engineers (whose lead organization the ASCE has adopted metric) as FFU numbers ie in eighths of an inch. It is interesting to sit explaining to a bunch of future constructors that a #3 bar is 9 mm and yes a 9 is punched on the bar but the engineer who signs the drawings will call it a #3 even though the manufacturers stopped marking the bar as such years ago. We even sat and watched them make the rolling forms and putting on the metric numbers.
What happens when some one finally picks up a real 9 mm bar and puts it place of a #9 (28 mm) and we have someone killed. Of course it is just an accident.
The guy from NUCOR said they were considering changing the other products to metric years ago but they met resistance is the best way to put it.
John Nichols BE, Ph.D. (Newcastle), MIE (Aust), Chartered Professional Engineer
Assistant Professor
Texas A&M University
Department of Construction Science
Langford AC
Rm: A414 MD 3137
College Station, TX 77843-3137
Electronic mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Telephone: 979 845 6541 Facsimile: 979 862 1572 ----------------------------------------------------------------- a fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi
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