If yards, feet and inches were good at estimating distance why is it that things are estimated in "football fields" long in the USA? As big as "Rhode Island" is irksome, most people never having been to Rhode Island, how would they know how big it is?
Seems to me the meter is perfect for estimating any length, be it the 100 m length of a football field to the length of a battleship, the size of a room and the distance to the next exit. I have a very good Map app on my iPad "Navigon" that I have set up with voice commands in metric, it states turn left in 300 m, 100 m, 30 m, etc. Even my non metric wife has no problem using it. It also give a lot of context to an appreciation of the metre because the unit remains the same at 2000 metres or 20 metres. In Wombat it changes from miles to feet. I watched a TV program the other day that showed a moving map that showed turn left in 325 feet, I had to rewind the DVR because I thought it odd that it said 325 instead of 300 feet. (hidden metric?) turns out it was counting down in feet. On another note, 10 square feet is close enough to 1 square metre that it allows you to price carpet, wood floors etc in something more appropriate, $1,40/ft2 would be $14/m2, I find it very easy to visualise a square metre and hence the price of carpeting a room, 5 x 6 m roughly 30 m2, $420 roughly. Mike Payne On 23/03/2013, at 19:18 , Paul Trusten <trus...@grandecom.net> wrote: > In her article > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2013/03/21/metric-system_n_2923997.html, > ila Nordstrom states that she believes customary units are better for > estimating the dimensions of things in everyday life. How do those of you in > countries where the metric system predominates think and speak in meters? > What language do you use? If, for example, you are comparing the height of > a refrigerator to your own height, do you think of it as being "several > centimeters" different from you height? > > > Paul > > > > Paul R. Trusten > Registered Pharmacist > Vice President and Public Relations Director > U.S. Metric Association, Inc. > www.metric.org > trus...@grandecom.net > +1(432)528-7724 > >
