I wonder if the professor was consistently hard core and used radians (not degrees) for plane angles.
From: Mike Millet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:12:18 -0700 To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:40109] Metric in Physics class By some random curse this semester the only science class I could take that fit into my work schedule was Beginning Physics. I wouldn't have taken it except for the fact that it fulfills my goal for the general credit and I figured I may as well give it a try. Having heard some of the stories on this list about people walking in on engineering or other classes to find a bizarre mix of US and metric measures, I was kind of wondering how this professor would address it. Luckily for me, he announced the first day of class that in his classroom all problems and discussion would refer solely to metric units, and that there would be no inches, feet, miles, etc in any of the problems or during any of the discussion. Several people objected to this and asked him to use "normal" measurements, but he politely informed them that for the majority of the world the SI "was" the normal unit of measure. He also mentioned that physics was an exact science, and said that you couldn't get any more exact than the metric system allows, certainly not with decimal or fractional inches. The first problem he put up on the board was one of those "if train x travels at a 60 km/h over a distance of x kilometers and train y travels a speed of 80 km/h over x kilometers, how long would it take before they meet?" or something to that effect. When he asked for questions on the problem, several hands shot up with the invariable "what's a kilometer?". They then explained that although they had been taught metric in passing, their teachers never insisted on a great familiarity with it, and so they had never learned the basics As a result of this, we are having a refresher course on metric measure during tomorrow's class. That way everyone is on the same page from now on. It doesn't make the physics any easier to understand, but I credit the metric system and my early introduction to it with giving me a greater chance of passing :). Kudos to the professor in sticking to his guns and finding a way to slowly drag yet another group of students into the modern scientific world. Mike -- "The boy is dangerous, they all sense it why can't you?" (\__/) (='.'=)This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your (")_(")signature to help him gain world domination.
