On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, Jim Elwell wrote: after Gene Mechtly wrote: > > > >Students in all other countries and future US students would not have > >the burden of non-SI source data, and have to make conversions from ifp.
> ... I teach US citizens in the US, > and they are going to have to deal with food in calories, electricity in > kilowatthours and natural gas in dekatherms for a while yet, so I think > they should know how to get from colloquial units to metric units. True, Jim (E), but teaching conversion skills should be a separate lesson (with a sunset provision for phase out after 20xx); and not mixed with the more important demonstration that in SI the unit of energy of all kinds is the joule, and that the unit of power of all kinds is the watt. *Isolate* conversion burdens as much as possible from teaching the basic study of the SI, its simplicity, and its applications. For example, draw on Pat's database of examples in SI. Gene.
