The same happened to me; every year my high school physics students think that the inch side of the meter stick is the cm side and the metric side is the mm one. They have difficulties to understand that the meter, cm, and mm are on the same side. Those dual meter stick are confusing the students.
John Altounji One size does not fit all. Social promotion ruined Education. http://bit.do/physci -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of James Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 6:19 PM To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:54601] Re: Innumeracy. > Just goes to show that even people who use feet and inches have no idea how > many inches in a foot. This goes well with the US students measuring on a > ruler and assuming the 8th’s are decimals of an inch. To repeat an anecdote posted here some years ago, I ran a lab -- the first one for an Introductory Physics course -- in which students had to measure blocks of wood and assign uncertainties to those values as a first step in the exercise. One group came up with a length of 4.13 cm and I could easily see that the block was much larger than that. I asked them how they came up with that figure. Sure enough, a student picked up a cheap, dual-scale, plastic ruler which was the assigned lab equipment. He put the inch scale along the block, noted the "4" tick mark, then counted the small ones past that "4" mark until he came to the end of the block. Yep. There were 13 of those tick marks! An interesting discussion followed. Jim On 2015-02-08 15:47, Michael Payne wrote: > Just been watching a program on a UK channel 5 star, about a “bedroom tax”. > This was the first time I’d heard of this tax. The guy paying the tax had to > measure his room after reading in a British tabloid that any room less than > 71 ft2 was not subject to this tax. So he got out his measuring tape (in > feet) and proceeded to measure and came up with 7 feet 15 inches! Just goes > to show that even people who use feet and inches have no idea how many inches > in a foot. This goes well with the US students measuring on a ruler and > assuming the 8th’s are decimals of an inch. A kid counts 5 inches and 4 > eighths and comes up with 5.4 inches. Another reason to change to metric. > > Mike Payne > > > > -- James R. Frysinger 632 Stoney Point Mountain Road Doyle TN 38559-3030 (C) 931.212.0267 (H) 931.657.3107 (F) 931.657.3108
