New here :-)

From: Chad Fernandez <fernande_at_internet1.net>
Date: Mon Mar 5 21:29:19 2001

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
Received on Mon Mar 05 2001 - 21:29:19 GMT