The Science Channel, which is a part of the Discovery complex, ran a "How
It's Made Program" last night. From the credits at the end, at least this
episode was produced in Canada. I was curious to see how it would run in
the United States.
The program, in the segment on the mining of silver ore, always used
kilograms instead of pounds. There was a close-up of a scale, which
displayed a reading in "mg". But a distance was given in inches.
These persistent inconsistences (as Canada certainly uses millimetres or
centimetres) are quite perplexing. I could understand an all-metric
program or an all non-metric program, dumbed down for the United States.
Another program, on astronomy, talked about astronomical distances in
miles (where it hardly mattered for the common perception), but shorter
distances (such as for the size of a meteor) in metres.
It has always perplexed me why these programs are so inconsisent. In a
curious way, it confirms my approach that the United States is *not* a
non-metric country. It is a country stuck in the middle of conversion,
not unlike England and even Canada.
Martin Morrison
Training and SI Columnist, "Metric Today"
