Bill, thanks for this info. Reagan! I remember that foolishness faintly. He did not have any vision, nor did he think what trouble he could have avoided in math classes,
Marta Sent from my iPad with the hope typos are at a minimum On Apr 24, 2011, at 10:27, Bill Rising <[email protected]> wrote: > On Apr 24, 2011, at 9:02 , Marta Edie wrote: > >> Happy Easter everybody- here it rains and thunders still!! >> >> While I don't understand, Bill , what it i all about, I like the 10 based >> usage. At least it sounds more 21st century. I appreciate all the zeros. >> >> Now hopefully we will get rid of our foot and inch system , too, sometime. I >> have lived in this country since 1950 and still have trouble, I always >> change into the 10 system in my mind when I measure rugs and curtains and >> the like. Where I read feet I always divide by three which at least gives me >> a general feeling of meters, then I know where I am in my mind. > > Thomas Jefferson actually advocated for the metric system after the French > had put it together. Nobody bit, unfortunately. We were then supposed to be > on the metric system by 1985 or so, but Reagan declared it 'unamerican' > (unlike the English system) and scrapped all the changeover plans. So... > we're still stuck with a system where our unit of land measure (acre) is > 1/640 of a square mile, and the unit of rain runoff (so important this week) > is an inch-acre. At least it makes for interesting arithmetic questions in > chemistry class: How many gallons in an inch-acre? > > Bill > > > _______________________________________________ > MacGroup mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.math.louisville.edu/mailman/listinfo/macgroup _______________________________________________ MacGroup mailing list [email protected] http://www.math.louisville.edu/mailman/listinfo/macgroup
