On Monday 10 October 2011 11:41:05 Saint Lucia Metrication Secretariat wrote: > Dear Ezra > > Attached is a draft of our Metric Pocket Guide. This Guide is aimed at the > ordinary man, hence we have endeavoured to make it as simple as possible. > > We should be grateful for review, comments and suggestions of the USMA.
Page 6 (7 by PDF numbering) states that there are four basic measurement units: meter, kilogram, liter, and gram. A liter is 0.001 cubic meter, and a gram is 0.001 kilogram, so there are only two basic units there. The others are the second (well known from clocks), the ampere, the kelvin (most people use its offset, the degree Celsius), the candela (its derived unit, the lumen, is often seen on light bulb labels), and the mole (used only by chemists, though that may broadly include soapmakers). I'd omit the deciliter and centiliter. I've seen cL molded in bottles, but labels are in mL or L. Page 9: "kilo" is of Greek, not Latin, origin. I'd show two staircases: one from milli to kilo by steps of 10, and one from, say, nano to giga, by steps of 1000. Page 12: C (coulomb) isn't an everyday unit for most people. Mm is valid, but it means megametre, not millimetre. There should be a space between the number and the symbol. Page 14: Drop "weight". Weight is the force of gravity on a mass and is measured in newtons. Also, if you're going to mention the tonne, mention the megagram, which is equal. The symbols for minute and hour are "min" and "h". "hr" makes me think of Croatia or hryvnia, neither of which makes sense. Your "°C" looks like "IC" for some reason. Page 15: You have "L" but "ml". Also mention that 1 cm³ = 1 mL and 1 m³ = 1 kL. Page 16: In cooking, mention the gram. Page 19: Does anyone measure distances between towns that precisely? Pages 23 and 24: You mean "formerly" (at a past time), not "formally" (conforming to something). Mention the relationship (one is 273.15 offset from the other) and that you have to express temperature in kelvins when multiplying. Page 24: Going metric is metrication, not metric conversion, which is multiplying by a conversion factor to get the metric equivalent of a measurement. For the gram, say "mass", not "mass of weight". Page 25: dittography of "system". Mention the pascal. Sorry for the delay, I got behind on reading this mailing list. Pierre -- .i toljundi do .ibabo mi'afra tu'a do .ibabo damba do .ibabo do jinga .icu'u la ma'atman.
