Dear Larry Bock,
What a wonderful opportunity you have to promote the final stages of
upgrading to the metric system for the USA.By choosing the fall of
2010 as your preferred timing you could easily include the date 2010
October 10.
This date has the short form:
10-10-10
It is a Sunday and I presume that the USA Science Festival will
include a weekend to maximise your audience. This simple date could
give you a great publicity hook. And the debate that would ensue about
whether the USA should use the metric system would also provide loads
of media coverage from which the USA Science Festival would not
suffer! If you decide to promote this date, you will get support from
Sally B. Mitchell at East Syracuse-Minoa High School in New York – see http://jce.divched.org/hs/Journal/Issues/2009/Sep/abs1013.html
As you probably know the USA is predominately metric already but it
needs a push to get it over the consciousness line. Let me explain
this a little:
1 Everybody in the USA drives an all-metric motor vehicle. Cars,
trucks, tractors, and motor bikes have been designed in metric and
built in metric since the 1970s, but then they are labelled with
stickers such as mph or psi.
2 Even the inches and the foot you are using for your tent sizes at
the USA Science Festival are metric (currently in the USA inches are
exactly 25.4 millimetres so a foot is exactly 304.8 mm)
3 Students in the USA all use metric computers that were designed and
built as all-metric devices that are then dumbed down to inch screen
sizes and inch page margins so that students do not know that they
live in an all-metric nation.
4 A major part of the foundation of the metric system arose in the USA
from the work of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George
Washington. See http://www.metricationmatters.com/who-invented-the-metric-system.html
5 Not using the metric system openly and honestly is costing the USA a
great deal of money – perhaps as high as a trillion dollars a year –
see http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/CostOfNonMetrication.pdf
From my perspective – in Geelong in Australia – to be open and honest
about the use of the metric system in the USA is a obvious thing to
do. However, I suppose that your point of view could differ from mine.
I was amazed last year when the 'Scientists and engineers and 15 other
organisations' made submissions to the presidential candidates that
did not refer to the metric system at all even though they all use
metric system units for all of their work every day. See http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/AMetricationElephant.pdf
If you decide to go down the progressive metric path, I suspect that
you could gain support from members of the United States Metric
Association so I will copy this email to them and to Sally Mitchell.
Please let me know if I can help you with your development of the USA
Science Festival.
Cheers and best of luck with your project,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, that you can obtain
from http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
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 http://www.metricationmatters.com
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected]
or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter
to subscribe.
