It's also true that changing to SI units for weight and volume is a lot more technically tractable than for length. Public opposition would still be a big barrier, though.
/glen
-----Original Message-----
From: William Thompson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: June 4, 2003 10:35 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] pedagogically barren?
Markus Kuhn wrote:
(stuff deleted)
> While the international inch is indeed linked to the meter by a
> reasonably round factor, and even shows up indirectly in a number of ISO
> standards (e.g., inch-based threads and pipes), this can clearly not be
> said for the US pound and the US gallon and units derived from these,
> which are still required by US federal law to be present on consumer
> packages. As long as it remains legal and even required in the US to
> price goods per gallon or pound (units completely unrelated to the inch!),
(rest deleted)
According to the NIST website, a gallon is defined as exactly 231 cubic inches.
I would say that was a long way from being completely unrelated to the inch.
While the pound is unrelated to the inch, it is defined as exactly 0.45359237
kilograms.
Neither is a nice round number, but there is a definite relationship.
William Thompson
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