2009 December 28
Dear Alice Fu,
In Science for 2009 December 18 page 1637, your discussion of
the NAEP report lists Strengths and Limitations. Both NAEP and you
failed to discuss a major limitation in US education, namely, the
teaching of inch-pound units o
Dear Pat,
Interesting summary. I'd like to challenge one fact, comment on another, and
finally add some facts from a US perspective that reinforce several of the
points you made.
*I find it very difficult to believe in 1814, the inch was legally defined as
three grains of barley. I suspect t
This half-serious piece is ignorable. I just wish the international pressure
he mentioned actually existed, or that the President had any inkling to act on
the issue of metric conversion.
I've said a few times on this discussion group that the biggest problem is the
combination of the undemocr
Dear all:
In reading how the various imperial measures varied in the 1800s, even if only
marginally, I find it intriguing that the one measurement required to be
consistent in those times managed to become/remain so - the railway standard
guage.
The Brits adopted the measurement of 1435 mm or
I understand that most US freeway exits are numbered with reference to the
number of miles from the state line (or the start of the freeway concerned).
In the Wikipedia article "Exit numbers"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_number), I saw the following:
"United States - The use of sequential o
When Canada converted from miles to km, all the distance-based exit numbers
were of course converted at the same time. I don't see this as being a problem.
John F-L
- Original Message -
From: Martin Vlietstra
To: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: Monday, December 28, 2009 8:03 PM
This is true for most states. If it crosses a border, numbering begins over at
0 at the southern or western border increasing to the north or east. The MUTCD
would permit miles or kilometers, but many states have laws requiring Customary
measure for traffic control. If it begins within the st
Dear Robert,
Congratulations on your letter to Alice Fu.
You may recall that a year or so ago, before the last presidential
election, I wrote on a similar theme in the article called, 'A
metrication elephant'. In this article I wrote that many scientific
and engineering groups were simply
...except Massachusetts!
My native state has always had consecutive exit numbering.
Paul Trusten
On Dec 28, 2009, at 14:03, "Martin Vlietstra"
wrote:
I understand that most US freeway exits are numbered with reference
to the number of miles from the state line (or the start of the
free
Let us examine the remarks on Butler in detail, using your Wikipedia reference,
and deleting a sentence about someone else to make the point more clearly.
Quoting,
Charles Butler, a mathematics teacher at Cheam School, in 1814 recorded the old
legal definition of the inch to be "three grains of s
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