It is doable but common person has to be considered. Take a few adults with only a high-school (or even elementary school) from any random Metric-only country and make a survey which units they are using and which prefixes. For example, I spent first 30 years of my life in several metric-only countries and I have almost never heard anyone using deci-, deca-, hecto-, etc, and many don't know what these are. 2 years after high-school most people will forget what is micro and mega, not to mention the rest. From reading this mailing list and reddit/r/Metric I see that many go into too much detail, for example forcing usage of mm instead of cm, but a common person growing up in metric country, millimeter is less convenient, and by the same logic, also less convenient for anyone trying to convert. Then, there are the ones that try to make people do everything right from the start, for example, imposing rules on how the prefixes should be used to avoid decimal points, and that just complicate things unnecessarily. That makes sense only with certain professions after everyone has fully adopted basic units and is able to think without converting. Most common people will error +-50% or more when estimating 10 cm, 1 kilogram, 1 kilometer, and any other. We might as well say yard is meter, quart is a liter, as for a common person without a measuring tape even that is precise enough, but is much simpler. There is no point in considering engineers, scientists and other highly educated people that are dealing with measurements every day for the initial efforts, and until we have a person at deli understanding metric and being able to sell you half a kilogram of meat, there will be no change. Milos
On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 5:24 PM Paul Trusten <[email protected]> wrote: > I personally went Celsius in 2003. True, America did not,but my cell phone > and my car always talk to me in Celsius only. The result is that I can talk > to anyone in Celsius only. During my 2013 visit to England, I noticed that > my English friend set the thermostat in his car to 17 on a chilly day. I > usually set mine to 21. The temperature in my apartment is 20 to 21. I have > dropped the “C” from my discourse. Metrication SHALL work! I totally agree > with Martin. We made the change with carbonated beverages (1 L, 2 L, 3 L). > We CAN do it with milk. We can do it with anything! > > > On Mar 22, 2020, at 12:23, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Al Lawrence's point is well taken in my opinion: arithemetical > conversions just turn people off. The best way to go metric is just to use > it in daily life - no conversions. Set your digital thermometer to degrees > Celsius; set your digital scale to kilograms - it's simple. Pretty soon > you'll have to think hard to interpret Fahrenheit and pounds! > > > > Kaimbridge's point is valid to a certain extent, e.g., with quarts and > liters, but nobody uses cmHg, as far as I know. > > > > Martin Morrison > > > > ============ > >> On Sun, 22 Mar 2020, Al Lawrence wrote: > >> > >> Most people hate math and will avoid it at all costs. Most people > don't even bother trying to figure out if buying two quarts of ice cream is > cheaper than buying a half gallon, and many couldn't do it if they tried. > They buy by visual size and assume the bigger size is cheaper per unit. > They buy two liter bottles of soda, half liter bottles of water and other > metric packaging without hesitation, simply by visually looking at the size > without even looking at the net contents. ANY and ALL conversion tables > (that look like math) or any other attempts to educate them, will turn > people off and are counterproductive. > >> Al Lawrence > > _______________________________________________ > > USMA mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma > _______________________________________________ > USMA mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma >
_______________________________________________ USMA mailing list [email protected] https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma
