I had an incident a few years ago. I was teaching physics to a student on a one-to-one basis. The book had the problem "Assuming that an atom was expanded to the size of an apple, how tall would you be". (It was assumed that atoms were 0.1 nm in size). The student measured an apple at 60 mm. I then asked him how tall he was. "Six foot" he replied. "What is that in metric units" I asked. "Two metres?" He seemed unsure of himself. I handed him a ruler and suggested that we convert feet to metric units. Rather than reading off 300 mm as being equal to 12 inches, he promptly measured his foot!
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michael Payne Sent: 10 November 2007 03:42 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:39696] Re: metric conversion I'd warrant this happens thousands of times every day here in the U.S. No one understands metric, but even less, people don't understand inch pound units. Michael Payne ----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick Moore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, 09 November 2007 20:31 Subject: [USMA:39695] metric conversion > You will get a smile out of this true-life story. > > Today as I walked through my company's mail room, I noticed the shipping > clerk peering at a computer screen with the banner "Metric Conversion." I > immediately stopped to watch her convert pounds to kilograms for some > foreign destination. But no! She was converting pounds to ounces, and a > web > site was helping her do the math. > > "If you just used kilograms," I pointed out, "you could do the math in > your > head." >
