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In a message dated 2005-12-19 15:29:42 Eastern Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Why do we keep assuming that others think Americans have no clue what metric I don't think people are playing dumb. I'd say the assumption that
Americans don't understand metric measures is an accurate assumption, in most
cases. And just understanding how to manipulate numbers in the
metric system isn't knowing it. Being able to 'visualize' or 'get a
feel' for the measure is the real test to knowing it. However, rather than
'dumbing things down' It seems it would be better to explain how much a kilogram
is. Simply telling people that a 2 litre bottle of water weighs 2
kilograms would be enough for them to understand the way it feels.
Fortunately the litre is understood because it actually is used. Simply
explaining what a metre is so that the person can visualize it is effective
also. The only bad thing is that people want to be able to compare
different experiences, and if all they ever see is US Customary they can't do
that. I can tell my mother that a 2 L bottle is 2 kg, but if I then tell
her that a baby weighs 3 kg she wouldn't have any idea how that compares to
other babies. To get a feel for the unit you must actually use it.
School taught me that a kilogram was a unit of mass, but I had no idea how
much it really was until I started to actually look at the kg on packages
of things and started weighing myself in kilograms; from that point I quickly
learned the 'feel' of the unit. The way you get a feel for a unit is by
using it. If you learn that a kilogram has 1000 grams and so on in a class
it doesn't mean that you have a feel for the unit; especially if you never used
it outside of the class. I think it would be a great favour to Americans
if doctors and hospitals exclusively went to kilograms; that would be a way to
force people to get used to the feel of a kilogram. It doesn't take long
to get the feel of a kilogram, but if you've never used it for anything outside
of a an equation in a class then you don't know what a kilogram feels
like.
As for the metre, I think everyone should roughly know what that is, but in
reality many really don't. It doesn't take much to learn to get used to,
but many people never used the metre outside of a math problem maybe 30 years
ago in school. And it's not like you really even have an option outside of
school to use metres. If you try going to a hardware store and ask for
about 2 metres of pipe they won't have any idea what you want. I actually
had that experience the other day; I had to explain what a metre was and then he
suggested that the 10 ft pipe length would be what I want. The person that
sold the pipe to me was young enough to have learned metric in school maybe 30
years ago, in the time since then he had forgotten anything about a metre; I'm
sure he wasn't trying to give me a hard time by pretending to not know how big a
metre is. Until pipe is actually sold in metric amounts it won't be
possible to really use metric for things like that. We have a very long
way to go to be metric; and without government intervention I don't see us ever
going completely metric. If everyone started going into hardware stores
and demanding metric amounts they'd quickly change; but in reality that just
isn't going to happen.
If people go years without ever having to use metric units they quickly
forget the 'feel' of the unit. For that matter public schools often teach
the units but not the 'feel'. People can picture how big a person is that
is 120 lbs, but throw stone or kilograms at them and they have no idea.
Richard
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