Paul,
Training to use metric units does not come with book-learning, it comes with conversions in everyday life. For example, petrol in the United Kingdom is advertised at 105.9 p/L. Almost everybody can convert that to £1.059 / L. Another area where the metric system can be used to reinforce mathematics (except possibly in Florida!) is to use the Celsius scale to explain negative numbers. Most parts of the United States experience freezing temperatures a large thermometer showing negative numbers in blue and positive in red would be a wonderful teaching tool in the lower classes (say seven year olds). _____ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul Trusten Sent: 14 March 2008 16:40 To: U.S. Metric Association Cc: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:40568] fluency in decimal SI manipulation, yocto to yotta! It bothers me when I see attempts to pick and choose among scales of units when it comes to metric education and metric usage. All students of SI should be trained to manipulate decimal fractions and decimal multiples of SI units with complete facility, across the SI prefix list in both directions, yocto to yotta! By the time they complete their metric exercises, this should be second nature to students. I don't think this is done in the U.S., and maybe someone on the list can tell me how it is done in other countries,but I would insist on it. Sometimes, for example, a drug dose gets expressed in grams on my hospital's computer when it should be in milligrams (i.e., following the rule of 1000). To the WOMBAT eye, however, it is sometimes incomprehensible. I get nurses asking me what 0.75 g means! If they don't see it written as 750 mg, they panic. That kind of query is intolerable to me. It just shouldn't happen. Growing up in 1950s U.S., I spent much time with a device called a multiplication table, that taught me how to learn multiplication by rote. Would that, at at later time in my education, I would have worked with a table of SI prefixes and mastered their manipulation as well! The list of steak servings on the menu of that Sydney restaurant I visited a year ago should be understood instantly as 0.4 kg, 0.5 kg, and 0.7 kg if the user wishes, but it was stated, respectively, as 400 g, 500 g, and 700 g. The New Zealand tape measure I have is a number line of millimeters, but the user should be able to mentally interpose centimeters and meters instantly, anywhere on the tape. I agree with the choice of the millimeter in some work. But that choice of the millimeter should not be made outside of a context of SI fluency on the part of the users. The user should be able to think naturally in terms of centimeters also, or meters, if (s)he so chooses. I believe that the choice should always be made through understanding, and not by some rote imposition. -- Paul Trusten, R.Ph. Public Relations Director U.S. Metric Association (USMA), Inc. www.metric.org 3609 Caldera Blvd., Apt. 122 Midland TX 79707-2872 US +1(432)528-7724 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Brij Bhushan Vij wrote: Tom Wade, sir(s): >> The most suitable units for this are centimeters. Insisting on the use of 'millimetre' as a base unit may defeat the purpose of educating the YOUNG tots in schools. Milli- being a sub-multiple [10^-3 i.e. one-thousandth]. This was the general argument when 'Metre, m, was taken to be the acceptable unit' for length so as to become the bridge between *small & large* measurement for length. METRE does need to be redefined in Le Systeme Internationale d'Unites (SI) as: one-10^5th of arc-angle Pi/180 (one degree);
