At 21 October 2005, 10:30 PM, Pat Naughtin wrote:
To provide a link to a metric conversion page is not, in my view, a good idea.
The process of metrication is not encouraged by metric conversions;
or to be more blunt, metric conversions are a direct impediment to
metrication progress.
I agree with your position that doing conversions impedes the process
of LEARNING metrication.
However, once someone knows metric, they may still have to do a
variety of conversions in their work. This is particularly true of
engineers, who are my company's main audience. I certainly know
metric, but regularly refer to my company's rulers or to ASTM/IEEE 10
2002 for conversion factors.
Terry's comments on Google's calculator were interesting, both from
the point of a feature of Google that I was not aware of, and from
the bigger viewpoint of the efforts of Google to surmise what you
want from pretty minimal information.
For example, merely typing "two feet" yields:
two feet = 60.96 centimeters
Now, what if I were interested in bipedal animals?
As interesting and useful as the Google calculator is (and I am sure
I'll use it now that I know of it), I would still be interested in a
site that can convert just about any known unit into metric, but not
the other way around.
Jim
