5 Mar
2001
5 Mar
'01
1:29 p.m.
I didn't mean to imply that SI was any easier to visualize. I just
recall comparing the different systems in Physics, and I actually using
SI. SI just seemed better, but I don't recall why. It seems to me that
SI doesn't use the centimeter, if I recall.
In Physics we weren't measuring anything common, I admit. In that case,
it doesn't really matter what units you use, from a visualization
standpoint.
Chad Fernandez
Michigan, USA
Richard Erlacher wrote:
Well, maybe it would work better, but I don't recall SI units being any more
easy to visualize than the "normal" metrics.
It's still easier, IMHO, to envision an inch as the width of a man's thumb, or a
foot as what it sounds like, or a cubit as the length from the tip of the middle
finger to the point of the elbow than it is to relate to a meter, which was
originally a totally arbitrary length, and the various decimal portions thereof.
It's easier to think of a mile, the distance covered by a thousand left
footprints of a marching army, than to contemplate a thousand meters (whatever
that is) in spite of the fact I know, for sure, that the meter is 39.37 of those
thumb-widths, or finger-segment lengths, or whatever, and, by simple virtue of
its name, I can easily envison roughly what's meant when someone says to use a
cup of tomato sauce, since I drink my coffee from a cup, even though the cup I
use holds 16 fl. oz.
I wouldn't pretend that the English systems of measures is "better" in any
sense, but I do believe that since it's based on things everyday people deal
with every day, it's a bit easier to relate to, hence use for everyday things.
It just makes more sense to visualize one of something I see every day, than to
contemplate so many milli-this's or kilo-that's. It's just human, and
it's
human nature that resists the conversion to metric units.
Dick