Washington Post article... Nat Crib Sheet, Metric Magic The Washington Post, October 19, 2000 , Edition: L Section: STYLE , Page: C15 The metric system, unlike those pesky pounds and ounces, makes sense. Just like the fingers on our hands (and the money in our pockets), it uses the decimal system: It's based on units of 10. Whether you're measuring distance (with meters), volume (with liters) or mass (with grams), you use the same prefixes. Counting by 10s, you can take an orderly stroll from gigantic kilos all the way down to eensy-weensy millis. But how do you remember the prefixes, and the order they go in? Twelve-year-old Youjin Chang of Potomac sent us an idea. Just remember this rather gross sentence: "King Henry's dirty underwear does contain mildew." It illustrates the metric measurements in decreasing orders of magnitude (that means from big to small). King--kilo- Henry's--hecto- Dirty--deka- Underwear--unit (meter, liter, gram) Does--deci- Contain--centi- Mildew--milli- There are 10 millimeters in a centimeter,10 centimeters in a decimeter, 10 decimeters in a meter, 10 meters in a dekameter, 10 dekameters in a hectometer and 10 hectometers in a kilometer. As for what's in King Henry's underwear, we wouldn't touch that with a 10-meter pole. Youjin Chang just won some KidsPost goodies. If we print your Cribsheet, you could be a winner, too. Write it up and send it to: Cribsheet, KidsPost, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071. Or e-mail it (with "Cribsheet" in the subject line) to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02:15 10-1
