Text 40628, 49 rader
Skriven 2007-12-07 09:48:25 av Alan Zisman (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 40617 av JAY EMRIE (1:123/140)
Ärende: New digitalist.
=======================
In article <41730$WIN95@JamNNTPd>, "JAY EMRIE -> ED VANCE" <1:123/140>
wrote:


 EV>> I have learned in my Photography and Amateur Radio hobbying to adjust
 EV>> and accept some Metric System values, but for the most part I use
 EV>> Inches, Feet, Miles..... I am definately not a SI advocate here in
 EV>> Indiana, although they teach it in the school classrooms now.    :-)

 JE> The US is one of the few holdout countries that continues to use ft,
 JE> in, miles etc. Take me for example. I KNOW what a meter and other metric
 JE> denominations are but after a life time of using inches, feet, miles
 JE> etc. change just isn't in the works. Our scientific communities is or has
 JE> changed but not the general public.

This sort of change takes a couple of generations... Canada officially
went metric in the 1970s, but now, even 30+ years later, things are
confused... gasoline is sold in litres, and temperatures are reported in
degrees celsius, and both of those conversions seem to have taken-- most
people are comfortable thinking of them in those units.

More confused are grocer's meat and vegetable sales-- many stores
continue to report prices in both pounds and kilograms-- some of the
confusion is heightened by our proximity to the US; as a result, most
people have cookbooks written for the US market, with instructions on
how long to roast (say) a 17 lb turkey and no instructions on how long
to roast the equivalent 7.7 kg bird. Deli meats and cheeses, how ever,
are priced per 100 gm.

Most confusing for many people, I suspect, are personal data-- height
and weight. Even my daughter, born after the conversion, who only
learned about kgs in school, for instance, doesn't (I think) know what
she weighs in kg, but could tell you her weight in pounds.

Personally, I always get confused ordering beer in Europe-- in Canada,
beer bottles report volume in millilitres-- a standard beer bottle is
about 375 ml. European bars and restaurants serve beer in centilitres...
so the same quantity is 37.5 cl.

But any way, the point is that change is slow-- it's an expectation that
a change can be mandated and then that it will make sense to people
right away only leads to frustration and failure.

-- 
- email: alan (at) zisman (dot) ca
- website: http://www.zisman.ca

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