[speaker001:] well I'm uh an engineer so I'm heartedly in favor of this country converting to metric
[speaker002:] I bet you are I bet you are I don't know you know when I was in uh when I was in high school several years ago you know we did probably two or two or three weeks on the subject you know and tried to teach you the whole thing in two or three weeks and of course when you're that age you really don't care anyway and I didn't get into it very much but then I took a a list of a basic math class a couple of semesters ago and we uh we were pretty heavily into the metric system and and before we started I just thought oh no I don't want to do this you know this is just going to be so hard and once I really realized how easy it was
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] uh it was wonderful I mean it was just incredible how much simpler it is than what you know I guess we just all have this mind set that oh this is so hard and we can't do this and it's really not hard I was surprised at how very easy it was I think most people just uh you know automatically have their minds set against it and don't give it a chance you know so
[speaker001:] Yeah well I think uh you know from an elementary standpoint it would help to get rid of some of the the oddball conversion units like
[speaker002:] oh sure
[speaker001:] twelve inches to the foot and
[speaker002:] exactly exactly
[speaker001:] thirty six inches to the yard and things like that but uh I think uh from my work experience I found well when in college I learned uh to use a rationalized system of measure which turned out to be the metric system
[speaker002:] uh uh-huh
[speaker001:] and an awful lot of the problems that we did on exams and our homework assignments and everything else involved converting
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] from uh English units or nonstandard units into this uh rationalized M K F system
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and uh so I became quite accustomed to uh to a rationalized system and and used to making all the necessary conversions
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and since then I have discovered uh other engineers are very prone to make mistakes because they will pick up a textbook and uh and find some formula for solving a problem
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and they fail to realize that the formula is expressed in the the rationalized M K F system and they'll proceed to plug in inches and feet and pounds and uh things like that and they come up with a funniest answers you ever you can imagine
[speaker002:] uh-huh uh-huh it just don't work I bet I bet
[speaker001:] and some of them don't realize that they've made a mistake and so uh you know a lot of energy and uh a lot of work and so forth uh goes into building something only to discover it doesn't work
[speaker002:] right right well you know I think that the that the only way that we are ever going to get this country switched over to metrics is just to start other with with the kids right now
[speaker001:] Yeah
[speaker002:] you know you you you're going to have to start with the kids who are in school that are in when school and you're going to have to teach it well not like I was in school and do two weeks on it in a math class and that's all you ever hear about it you know they're going to have to start with the little ones and teach it right now and then when you know those little ones are our age you know that's what they're going to know and that's what they're going to use there's no way you're going to get you know most of the United States adult population to automatically relearn and switch
[speaker001:] Yeah
[speaker002:] you know it's just not going to happen that way but I do think if they would start with the kids now at you know in you know twenty years from now we could be switched over
[speaker001:] yeah I kind of agree that uh maybe ten on or twenty years ago we should have gone into a uh sort of a dual display arrangement where you know our our speed limit signs were
[speaker002:] you know uh-huh
[speaker001:] were sort of a double sign with a a big miles per hour and a little kilometers per hour type uh marking on the side
[speaker002:] yeah yeah I agree
[speaker001:] and then over the years the the kilometers per hour gets bigger than the miles per hour and eventually disappears
[speaker002:] they'll very good idea yeah yeah
[speaker001:] uh and little things like that I I notice in a lot of uh uh technical literature that you pick up and catalogs and so forth that you will find the metric units expressed in parenthesis or sometimes the other way around the metric units are expressed first and then the English equivalent that's uh is put into parenthesis for reference
[speaker002:] uh-huh uh-huh yeah I think I think it's going to take that but I you know I I think it's going to take a lot more than that too you know it's going to take it's going to take this education with our with our kids I really believe that but you know you it we we knew that we weren't going to have to ever use it again we knew we were going to have two or three weeks of it in math class so why take the time to really learn it
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] you know I mean you would you know learn enough to get by on the test and then you forgot about it because you knew you were never going to see it again in the rest of your years of school you know and and that that's not the way to convert over you're going to have these kids you know teaching it dually even you know teaching both systems which is a lot I know a lot more for the teachers to have to teach but that's the only way they're going to get switched over you know
[speaker001:] yeah I think also equally important is that uh it needs to be put into practice in in everyday life we're seeing a little bit of it now that you go out to work on your car and you discover your English wrenches don't fit
[speaker002:] oh yes yeah yeah yeah that's true too that's true
[speaker001:] you've got to go out and buy a metric set
[speaker002:] buy a whole knew metric set yeah well I think you know it's something that's going to take quite some time to happen but I I still don't think that they're doing all that it's going to take to make it happen you know it's going to happen slowly no matter what but there's going to have to be a lot more education involved than there is right now to get it to to get it to switch over
[speaker001:] uh-huh I was a little disappointed that uh United States is lagging the rest of the world but all of the other countries in the world have made the change and even the British which are probably the most stodgy
[speaker002:] oh yeah yeah uh-huh
[speaker001:] population and the originator of our English system of measure uh they have gone metric
[speaker002:] even they have switched yeah so yeah we're not uh we're not necessarily on the cutting edge in everything are we just like we think we are
[speaker001:] yeah right
[speaker002:] so well I think eventually it will happen you know it's just going to take it's just going to take a lot of education and a lot of time and like I said I was just totally amazed at how at how very easy it was you know I I just couldn't
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] you know I just when I going into it I just had this block and I went there's just no way I'm going to be able to learn this and when I sat down and really said okay just you know forget your old prejudices and really look at it you know and once you look at it's so really simple you know you there's really nothing to memorize there's nothing to learn it just all works the same you know you just you know transform that little you know dot from one place one way to the other you know and that's about all you have to do so anyway I think it will happen eventually
[speaker001:] yeah I I think one of the other concepts that uh comes along with using a rationalized system of measure is uh a technique of keeping track of units
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] when you're solving a problem that if you're sitting there trying to uh establish a relationship with some physical system uh when you come up with your final formula if you analyze the units of measure they should come out right
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and the the basic units of measure are are distance and time and mass and electric charge
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and so if you convert all your measure into those uh fundamental units and analyze them you can uh get a pretty good sense as to whether your formula is correct
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] maybe you left out a factor of pi or something like that but
[speaker002:] right right well you know I think uh I think it's going to happen I don't know I don't know what else I could suggest to them you know if they ask me what should we do I don't know I wouldn't know what else to suggest to them just education start with these little kids you know and like you said you know start making it practice you know start showing all the street signs and all the cars of course I think all the cars are manufactured that way they aren't aren't all of them most o f the new ones I'm seeing are are made with miles per hour and kilometers on them
[speaker001:] Well I most of them have uh the option the American American made cars have uh the the miles per hour as the big scale and they're little tick marks uh sort of hidden on the scale which shows kilometers per hour
[speaker002:] oh really right uh-huh
[speaker001:] But those that are manufactured for sale in in Europe and so forth are quite the other way around
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] and in a lot of the Japanese cars that come to this country particularly those that have the uh electronic panels there's a little push button some place on the panel that you can switch between uh kilometers per hour and miles per hour
[speaker002:] is there really huh
[speaker001:] my wife's uh Chrysler convertible has little buttons that you can choose what display you want to see
[speaker002:] well that's interesting yeah well
[speaker001:] Yeah I noticed my van has a uh a button on the temperature gauge that you can switch between centigrade and fahrenheit
[speaker002:] oh well that's interesting too I had never seen that yeah you know you look at most of the you know like the bank clocks and stuff like that it tells you you know fahrenheit and centigrade and it's going take those kinds of things you know switching you know getting us all accustomed to seeing both you know but most people don't pay any attention you know it's going to take some education right along with it most people don't know what that means you know so
[speaker001:] yeah well we also need to be a little bit careful and maybe we start to not use the English measure anymore like when you listen to the weather forecast the the weather man may give the temperature in centigrade and fahrenheit and everybody ignores the centigrade and listens to the fahrenheit to the fahrenheit
[speaker002:] that's right because that's what they're familiar with
[speaker001:] and we we sort of have to get accustomed to the fact that our body temperature is thirty seven degrees centigrade yes
[speaker002:] right that's going to be hard to do it's going to be very hard to do you know you
[speaker001:] and that it's a nice day when it's twenty five degrees outside
[speaker002:] you know I'm so used to saying oh my babies got a hundred and three degree fever and you know just say it's thirty nine is not just going to sound very bad you know
[speaker001:] yeah the Europeans think that you're baby is boiling over
[speaker002:] that's right that's right your baby's still alive with hundred and three so yeah it's going to take a changing lot of our old prejudices and you know just making up our minds that yes we are going to do this and we're just going to forgot this old way and we're just going to do it you know and I don't think the older generation is probably ready to do that you know
[speaker001:] Yeah no I hope we get to the point where maybe a couple of generations from now when somebody reads the old adage