Paul: May I echo James' welcome to this group. I'll keep my background simple. I'm a retired quantity surveyor (construction cost consultant/economist), and lived in Canada for 30 years before returning to my 'homeland' (UK) for personal reasons. I was part of Canada's conversion to SI in the '70s, sitting on a construction sector committee. That's when I got used to SI (after being heavily prejudiced against it), and have tried to use only the metric system since.
Canada and the UK both are in a muddle, but in different areas. Both countries are well down the road to metric usage. But both countries seem to have stalled, as you may have gathered, in getting the population to use metric units in everyday usage, conversation, etc. In some ways the Canadians are ahead here, as NOBODY in Canada refers to miles any more - it's kilometres and metres (on the roads) all the way. Most Canadians will refer to their car fuel consumption in L/100 km (too hard to make the double conversion to mpg - and in Canada it used to be the imperial 4.54 L gallon, not the US 3.78 L gallon). For myself today, I unfortunately have to deal in miles on the roads, but like James I have my car's computer set to SI units. My car is a Citroen C5, so not hard to do! But for everyday usage, I deal solely in metric units. Pretty well everything I buy in the shops is in metric. The other day I surprised my GP when I went for my annual checkup. She said she had to weigh me and take my height. I told her - 67 kg and 178. She was amazed, as few people in the UK use metric for this - it's stones and pounds for weight (bizarre), and feet and inches for height. But a lot of people will use metric for distances - a little while ago, when I was in a strange town and looking for pub where I was meeting an old friend, I asked two cyclists if I was headed in the right direction. Sure, they answered - go down this path for about 150 m and you will see the pub on your left. Yes, I do use fractions in every day talk - a metre and a half for a measurement between two fence posts (but measured in mm when actually doing the work), etc. I tend to use kilos when talking about how much I weigh, and so on. I did write an article on these lines for Metric Views (as published by the UKMA), and I attach it to this email. Hope this helps. John F-L ----- Original Message ----- From: Paul Rittman To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: Friday, April 01, 2011 5:32 PM Subject: [USMA:50249] Units for measuring short lengths in personal life I have been looking at the metric system for a couple of years now. My primary reason for exploring it has been my continual frustration with the bizarre medley of traditional imperial units—bushels, hogheads, hundredweights, etc., as well as the various types of ounces. I teach history at the college level and struggle to be able to remember statistics because they are usually attached to some unit that I can’t seem to recall off the top of my head. First, I have seen many people in threads (not here) state that they like using the metric on the job, but at home and in their personal lives, they prefer the traditional units. I think it is best for society to pick one system and use it (almost) exclusively, instead of switching between two separate systems—and I’m sure some NASA engineers would agree with me there. My main problem with the metric system is trying to use it in my daily life (I live in the southern California region in the United States). I don’t really have a problem with kilometers or liters, but with the shorter units of length that I would be using in my daily life. I guess its easier to visualize 6 feet than 180 or so centimeters. I read Pat’s article on using the millimeter (perhaps he was simply saying that businesses should use mm, with individuals using what they prefer?), but it just seemed a bit too much to continually tell myself, “I’m sitting 150 mm from the window,” or something like that, or that I’m 18,500 mm tall. Even cm seem to small, but decimeters seemed good—about the width of my hand. But then I looked around and saw that pretty much nothing was measured in terms of the decimeter (except pools in metric countries). Any suggestions on ingraining the metric system in your personal life? This isn’t the only question I have, but it’s the most significant. Honestly, I think I’d rather speak in terms of “I’m a third of a meter away from the window” than any other metric way of speaking—a meter is pretty easy for me to visualize, as are simple fractions like that—but I keep getting the idea that one isn’t supposed to use fractions in the metric system. Or is this simply in a professional setting, where calculations need to be used? I’ll save my next question for a future thread, after we solve this one. J <!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]-->
metric article 20090117.doc
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