From: "Steve Ewing" 

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 13:19:48 -0500, Gary Wiltshire  wrote:

> I was watching a program on NASA TV, detailing the history of the two
> most recent successfulMars missions.  They were giving temperatures at
> the surface in Celsius but windspeeds inmiles per hour.

They really screwed up the metric conversion, by treating it as a
conversion at all.  How many people can realistically hold out their hands
and say, "this is a yard"?   They'd do just as well in saying, a
meter is
about *this* long.  It's all the conversion stuff: a meter is 39.X inches,
a quart is 1.x liters, and so on, just confuses people and makes it seem
harder than it is.

Ask my wife what 8 fluid ounces is, and she'll say, fill the measuring cup
to here.  It's not too hard to do the same with ml.

Everyone knows what 2 liters is: because the manufacturers just went out
and made the bottles that size.  Every mechanic works with metric wrenches,
and probably is not complaining too much: gee, what size is between 7mm and
9mm, compared to calculating the size between 1/4 inch and 5/16 inch?  I
say, if they are going to switch (and I am in favor of it) then just do it.
 Put road signs in km, and if you don't know how far it is when it says
"Next Exit 15km", by God you will once you get there.

I do use fathoms a lot, when running cable: outstretched arms is a fathom=6
feet, but that's two meters, close enough for government work.

--
Steve 
http://www.qmss.com/sewing

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