On 2008/03/13, at 11:14 PM, Howard Ressel wrote:
Well reality is that we are not there yet and as Stan Jakuba once
said
in a training I took from him, that we, as engineers will all need to
speak two languages for years to come, both English and metric.
I watched the docking and it does hurt to hear "the shuttle is now
only
5 feet from the International Space Station".
Dear Howard,
I understand your point about professional engineers needing to know
about metric units and about many, if not all, of the old pre-metric
measures.
However, I think that you leave out an enormous order of complexity.
A leading engineer also needs to have a third skill — how to convert
between any and all the many old pre-metric measures and the much
fewer metric (SI) units. It's not a two-way thing but a three-fold
issue.
Unfortunately, while it is true that engineers might need this three-
fold skill, it does not follow that anyone else need acquire all
three of metric skills, non-metric skills, and conversion skills.
They only need the first of these — the metric skills.
I believe that it is ludicrous, for example, to teach any of the pre-
metric measures or the conversion skills to school children who might
never use them throughout their lives because they only need metric
units (unless they become engineers!).
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See
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