jonmac wrote:
>
> I've got an infallible system for converting miles to kms.
> Double the miles and knock a bit off the approximated kms. 5
> miles = 8kms. To go the other way, halve the kms and add a
> bit on. Works a treat and I haven't run out of gas yet on
> long distance night runs where all might fuel stations in
> France are a rare event !!!! Sadly, this doesn't work quite
> so well in working out the nearest equivalent to a 5/16 or
> a 17mm spanner - but I'm working on that.
Hmm, the quick practical guide... 11mm fits 7/16, 13mm tightly fits 1/2,
14 mm variably fits 9/16, 15mm won't fit 5/8, 5/8 won't properly fit
15mm, 17mm seems to fit an 11/16, but an 11/16 often doesn't fit a 17mm,
and the 19mm is almost interchangeable with a 3/4. 22mm is good for
pressure switch flats and not much else. Hmmph. <g>
Ah, well, the difficulty in this country, in one sense, is that it is
full of rednecks who can only measure things in quarts. <g>
> In a slightly more sensible mode, metrication globally has
> to be inevitable. It might even help the Mars space probe
> get there (duck) and let us all hear what it's found.
The point about the Mars lander is well-taken--even NASA and the Jet
Propulsion Labs have their problems in that regard. Even so, there was a
massive effort in the `70s to convert this country to metric use, which
was generally viewed as a political effort to globalize the country,
rather than to globalize units of measurements. The uninitiated and
uneducated in this country see a forced adoption of an international
system of measurement akin to communism.... <sigh>
Language, though Jan may be right about Europe, is a different matter
here. Languages aren't required any longer, and, let's face it,
Americans have always butchered foreign languages as equally or better
than they do their own. <g> (It's one of my favorite surprises to spring
on my French-Canadian counterparts, to have my native French-speaking
parts writer answer their requests for information... I see it as good
advertising for us Americans. <g>)
Most people in the US miss the real point of units of measurement. It is
not about our culture, but about our educational system. Anyone who has
taken a college-level chemistry course in this country must adopt IU
measurements. Yet, only the people majoring in chemistry do take such
courses. The rest are not required to do so, these days. In 1971, even
though I was an English major, I was required to take twelve hours of
science and math courses (I took eighteen). One of those was a chemistry
course for chemistry majors. I learned the IU system just as well as I
know the English measurement system, in the same way, less efficiently,
that I learned German... by being educated in it.
But, there's another, more subtle point which Europeans such as Jan seem
not to understand--the economic impact of swapping measurement
systems--every producer from milk to oil to insecticides must change
labeling, containers, manufacturing processes and packaging to conform
to IU standards, and most American manufacturers baulk at such mandated
changes which would inevitably result in lower profits, initially. If
there's no absolute economic detriment in not doing so, manufacturers
won't do it, period. If manufacturers and suppliers don't make the
change, the culture won't adapt. The measurement system in use in Europe
is long-standing, and that is not the case in the US. There are economic
costs related to the wholesale changes required in the US, and, hence, a
goodly part of the resistance to change, rather than a wholesale
inability of the populace to understand those changes, is about
economics.
Cheers.
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