[USMA:36633] Re: metric experience at home

[Remek Kocz]

My 6-year-old has been fascinated by the thermometer lately, so I took that as an opportunity to teach him Celsius.  He wants to know each morning which jacket to put on for school, so depending on how many degrees the thermometer reads, we pick either a winter or a spring jacket.  As it happens, we started when the morning temps were around 0C, and now we're up to 10-15C, so it's really perfect time to give him a very practical sense of reading a thermometer.  He already knows that snow won't stay around if the temps are above 0C, and that it's t-shirt weather when we go around 18C.  It's a wonderful thing to be able to teach this to one's kids, and I do gain another sense of appreciation of the sheer elegance of centigrade.

We're also working on meters, since he started bringing feet from school.  Right now it's just kiddie banter like "giants are a million feet tall," but I may as well head off the USC pollution early.  So, he learned that he is a meter and a quarter tall, that a meter is as long as dad stretching out his arms or as tall as he is to the shoulder.  Easy enough.  Then I estimated the height of our house at 10 m, the trees in the backyard at 20 m, and told him that the clouds are up at 2000 m. 

Remek

On 4/21/06, Howard Ressel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I called my 13 yr old son with a favor the other day (home alone on spring break). Asked him to get a tape measure from my toolbox and measure the length of a fluorescent bulb so I could get a new one at lunch. I have several tape measures, one in English, on in metric and several in dual - he could have taken any of them. Without me prompting he read me the length as 300. I said is that millimeters he said yes.

Next I went to the store to find the bulb figuring id be looking for a 12" long bulb. To my surprise and delight I found what I needed on the shelf, only one choice. It was at  Home Depot (do not remember the brand) and it was labeled as 30 cm with no English units.

Al in all a very metrically illuminating experience for the day.

Howard Ressel
Project Design Engineer, Region 4
(585) 272-3372