On 22-06-09 16:56, J. Clarke wrote:
Savageduck wrote:
On 2009-06-22 10:32:06 -0700, John
said:

Jürgen Exner wrote:

How many of you proud US-americans would have known of the top of
your head without looking it up somewhere how many feet are in one
mile?
Proud, and US AND American! Wow.

Whether proud or not, I suspect that most US educated folk will know
that there are 5,280 feet in a mile. At least that's what my memory
serves up.
Yup. 1760 yards to the mile X 3 = 5280 feet.
I'd love the metric system if that's what I grew up with; no
conversions necessary.
What I dislike most is Celsius, again, as it is unfamiliar and I
have to convert most C to F to 'get' what the temperature is.
All my college physics& chemistry was metric, and that was over 40
years ago!

I learned in high school that scientist and engineers never do conversions,
they work in one system or another. In my first real world engineering job
I found out that the company had data going back into the '20s and most of
it before 1960 or so was in the US customary system, while later it was
metric, so lots and lots and lots of conversions.

You can be sure that in some integration projects, it is near inevitable
that conversions need to be made. We avoid Imperial/US measurements
whenever possible ... but it's not always possible. Over the past 10
years I've not had any trouble from US suppliers or integrators with
metric specifications. They just do it. I think the younger (under 50)
engineers, technicians and buyers have that attitude now. Certainly any
system for the US military is performance spec'd in metric most all of
the time (though navigation terms are often nautical units for air/Navy.
One program over the past 10 years specified a display in yards).

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