| I have been lecturing basic sciences in African | | | | uncertainties of measurement or calculated quantities. |
| universities, in time when the countries of Africa have | | | | This prompted me to write the book on metric |
| been changing their fps system to SI system. A very | | | | measurements and experimental science. |
| interesting and challenging period! It took some years to | | | | I believe that one important step of many steps to |
| accomplish the change fully. | | | | conduct a successful metrication in the USA is to |
| Surprisingly, the change was more visible and easier | | | | prepare the science teachers to teach the SI system, |
| done in business (packaging, volumes, balances), shops | | | | at least, in the last years of a high school. |
| and streets (kilometer posts, speed signs, change to a | | | | ...You may compare learning a new system with a |
| right hand drive) than at a university laboratory. Why | | | | learning of a new language. It seems that it requires |
| did they succeed in relatively smooth way? You may | | | | constant "conversion". It may, at first, but for a short |
| say that if "there is will, there is a way". Although, it is | | | | time. The same quantity may have different names; so |
| true, the countries were less developed and the | | | | many factors, therefore: calculations, re-calculations! |
| changes had not met big resistance. At that time there | | | | This creates a fear! But it is hard way to learn! Just |
| was no book for students on experimental science, | | | | accepting a new language, you steadily forget that |
| where all quantities were to be measured and the | | | | messy, tedious (and unnecessary!) way. Without much |
| answers expressed in SI units. | | | | effort you start using this simple "language". Take |
| By the same token there was no "conversion" fear, so | | | | example of other nations! |
| hampering introduction of SI in USA. The problem | | | | They did it without much effort! I wish that the older |
| shifted to mathematical manipulation of power of ten | | | | generation in the USA did not fear and didnot make |
| notation, metric quantities, SI prefixes, inter-conversion | | | | objections! "Whatever new comes, it comes with pain". |
| within the metric system, accuracy, precision and the | | | | |