Posted on 05/15/2006 10:41:02 AM PDT by Junior
NORWICH, Conn. - Brent Maynard says he weighs 74 kilograms and is 169 centimeters tall. And if you ask him for directions, he'll give them in kilometers.
Maynard, a chemistry professor at Three Rivers Community College, is a champion for the metric system, a man who helped erect distance and speed signs in kilometers and whose goal in life is to see America ditch the standard system.
But in a country that's hooked on pounds, gallons and miles, it is a lonely cause. Last October during National Metric Week he sat alone in front of Norwich City Hall wearing a pro-metric placard and asking for signatures on a petition to get the U.S. Postal Service to weigh and measure packages in metric. Six people signed it.
Maynard, 52, a metrics fanatic since the age of 14, is used to the tepid response. He founded two metric associations in 1993 in Plainfield and in York, Maine. Each has about six members.
"They're not as passionate about it as I am," he said. "They kind of just go along with it."
Like most American youth, Maynard learned metrics in high school but unlike others, he has embraced it. He's even special ordered his truck with an odometer that reads distance in kilometers and writes congratulatory letters to companies that convert to dual labeling on products.
Maynard argues metrics is simpler because it's based on powers of 10 and more effective because the rest of the world uses it in business and in the military.
But despite several laws recognizing metric as the preferred system of measurement in the U.S., it's been slow to gain footing. The U.S. remains the only industrialized nation in the world to predominantly use the standard system, also known as the English system.
That doesn't mean metric measurements haven't crept into daily life in America. Soda comes in liters, film is in millimeters and electricity power is based on watts. Most food products use grams on their labels.
The hodgepodge of units has led to problems. In 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in the Martian atmosphere because NASA navigators mistakenly thought a contractor used metric measurements when standard units were actually used.
"It's confusing to use two systems — even for rocket scientists," said Lorelle Young, president of the U.S. Metric Association.
In Plainfield, where Maynard's association put up distance signs in kilometers, residents aren't even aware of the signs, even when they're right down the street.
Marlene Chenail, 70, lives up the street from one of Maynard's signs. She says she doesn't know the meaning behind "RI state border 8 km."
"We've never really looked at it but we know that it's there," Chenail said.
Maynard attributes the unfamiliarity to America's resistance to change and the perception that it's a foreign system.
"We seem, in our culture, awfully afraid to challenge people to think," he said.
While Maynard is one of the few adamantly promoting the system, there are others who speak out against metrication.
Seaver Leslie, president of Americans for Customary Weight and Measure in Wiscasset, Maine, said Americans shouldn't be forced to use either and argues that standard units are superior because the units are human-based and has history. The furlong — an eighth of a mile — is the distance a farmer could plow in a field and still be in earshot of his house if there was danger, Leslie said. Etymologists believe the word represents the distance a team of oxen could plow without needing a rest.
"They're very practical and very poetic," Leslie said. "They have worked for the farmer in the field, the carpenter in the shop and large contractors in industry and for our aerospace industry."
Amen, brother.
Well, personally, I find having the freezing point of water defined as zero and the boiling point as 100 quite intuitive and easy to use. To me, due to my experience growing up in Canada (mostly) after the metric change-over, having the freezing point of water at 32 seems quite counter-intuitive. Kelvins are useful for science (is there an aboslute Farenheit equivalent?) but not very intuitive for day to day use.
I, too learned metric in elementary school in the late 60's.
It's been marginally useful to me in the 40 years since.
But I never wrote love letters to it, as teachers seemed to want me to back then.
About the same time, AT&T started marketing the "picture phone." Nobody wanted to fool with those, either.
This is America, not Europe. We're the country that broke away from Europe to chart our own course, except when we go back every 30-50 years to clean up the latest Euro-mess.
If I can learn a smattering of German, French and Spanish, they can jolly well learn what an inchworm is.
Only if you're using an uncalibrated force scale (spring scale, stress-meter based scale). A balance-type scale, like a triple-beam, doctor's scale or analytical scale (as used in chem labs) will read correctly in any gravitational field, or constantly accelerating frame of reference, within limits of course. Hmmm, how do you measure mass in a zero-g environment?
...and then all you would have to do is retrieve the exact metes and bounds legal description for every separate parcel of real estate in the United States and re-write all 100 Million or so descriptions based upon your formula. Once you had done that, all that would be left is to contact the holders of all interests of record for each parcel, obtain thier written concurrence and record a new description for each. Simple, actually.
They'd have a blast outside the country. I did an AT in the Netherlands with my unit a few years back; I found myself translating the distance signs to the rest of the crew (exits were marked at 300, 600 and 1200 meters). My wife and mother-in-law took a trip south of the border a year or so ago, and all the signs down there were in metric, including the speed limit signs. Your Midwestern friends would find themselves in a target-rich environment the moment they crossed the U.S. border outbound.
It does raise the question, though - why l/100km, rather than km/l? Either works, but the latter is much more intuitively comparable and convertible to mpg than the former.
Ha ha or you could leave it the way it was. There's no reason some English could be used, just because its a pain to switch. Or computerize the entire process, it would be monumental but would end up saving time in the long run.
It's based on mercury. He was trying to scale his mercury themometer for maximum use. 0 deg F is as cold as he could make it and he tried to make 96 deg normal human body temp, so he could detect fevers.
Kelvins are useful for science (is there an aboslute Farenheit equivalent?)
Rankine. Same size degree as F, but zeroed at absolute. R=F+459.67
SD
100 km per liter is about 230 miles per gallon, if I've done my calcs correctly (100 km = ~60 miles and one gallon = ~3.8 liters; ~380 km/gallon).
Wasn't it always easier just to remember that: "a pint's a pound the world around"?
Just do the conversions when the property changes hands. The new deeds would have the new measurements. It wouldn't need to be done overnight, and converting every parcel of land in the country could take a couple of generations (land doesn't necessarily change hands every day).
"Rankine. Same size degree as F, but zeroed at absolute. R=F+459.67"
Thanks, right, Rankine, as in the Rankine cycle, which I vaguely recall from the Thermodynamics texts.
If I were to give half my farm to my son, we would each have 80 acres under the confusing old English system, but 32.374851 hectares under the French system. A subsequent division would yield 40 acre farms under the English system or a far easier to work with 16.1874255 hectares using the french system.
You got me convinced.
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