Nice to hear someone else is teaching and using only metric units in science
classes. Montgomery County Maryland public school system started that a few
years ago.
Stan Doore
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Millet
To: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 1:12 AM
Subject: [USMA:40109] Metric in Physics class
By some random curse this semester the only science class I could take that
fit into my work schedule was Beginning Physics.
I wouldn't have taken it except for the fact that it fulfills my goal for the
general credit and I figured I may as well give it a try. Having heard some of
the stories on this list about people walking in on engineering or other
classes to find a bizarre mix of US and metric measures, I was kind of
wondering how this professor would address it.
Luckily for me, he announced the first day of class that in his classroom all
problems and discussion would refer solely to metric units, and that there
would be no inches, feet, miles, etc in any of the problems or during any of
the discussion.
Several people objected to this and asked him to use "normal" measurements,
but he politely informed them that for the majority of the world the SI "was"
the normal unit of measure. He also mentioned that physics was an exact
science, and said that you couldn't get any more exact than the metric system
allows, certainly not with decimal or fractional inches.
The first problem he put up on the board was one of those "if train x travels
at a 60 km/h over a distance of x kilometers and train y travels a speed of 80
km/h over x kilometers, how long would it take before they meet?" or something
to that effect.
When he asked for questions on the problem, several hands shot up with the
invariable "what's a kilometer?". They then explained that although they had
been taught metric in passing, their teachers never insisted on a great
familiarity with it, and so they had never learned the basics
As a result of this, we are having a refresher course on metric measure
during tomorrow's class. That way everyone is on the same page from now on.
It doesn't make the physics any easier to understand, but I credit the metric
system and my early introduction to it with giving me a greater chance of
passing :). Kudos to the professor in sticking to his guns and finding a way to
slowly drag yet another group of students into the modern scientific world.
Mike
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