On Monday 03 December 2007 10:22, Nat Hager III wrote: > I meant to reply on this one a couple weeks ago, when someone commented on > having to study for their Statics exam using "foot-inch-whatever" measure > instead of standard metric.
Was that me? I don't have a statics exam, I'm taking it next semester, and someone let me look at the book. > I can sympathize with this, as someone who does adjunct/SBIR/academic-NSF > out of a small college. Periodically I hear students in the study room > trying to solve problems using feet, pounds, and "slugs", and complaining > loudly why everything can't just be metric. I feel their pain, but am > certainly not going to interfere with how another professor teaches his > course. > > Unless of course they ask me how to solve a problem, as usually in my lab > working late in the evening. In that case the answer is "I don't know", or > "I don't know unless I can convert everything to metric, solve the problem, > and convert back if that's what's required." Instead of saying "I don't know", why not show them how to solve the problem that way? I had a problem on my surveying homework in which an old deed had distances in chains and bearings measured with a compass, and a modern surveyor wants true bearings and feet. The magnetic deviation (which is called "variation" by sailors, who confusingly call local attraction "deviation") was given. I converted the chains to meters (1 ch is a bit over 20 m), calculated in old magnetic coordinates (one bearing was north and another was east, so that was easier), applied the deviation, and converted to feet. Pierre
