Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 13, 1993 TAG: 9311130136
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Betsy Biesenbach
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Well, the century is all but over - and not only am I not pumping liters of gas at the corner station, my Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Pizza mix has stopped telling me to add water in both measurements.
Am I the only person who would not only welcome the metric system with open arms, but also offer it my spare room until it found a place to stay?
The trouble with the metric system is that it is not marketing itself to the right audience: the severely math-impaired.
I go into fabric stores with my careful measurements, then I break out in a sweat when I realize I've gotten the yards and feet mixed up. I wander blindly among the poplins and polyesters, muttering numbers to myself, until I end up with enough fabric to sew a mainsail.
I drive my friends nuts when I hand them tools. They have, say, a five-sixteenths socket, and they ask me to get something smaller. So I hand them the one with the three and the four on it. What's the problem? Three and four are both littler than five and 16.
But before you run away screaming at 100 kilometers per hour at the thought of learning a new system of measurement when you haven't even mastered the old one, consider this: the metric system is easy. It has lots of nice, round numbers, which means you can perform complicated calculations, such as subtraction, on your fingers!
I was sold on metrics last year, when I was designing a bookcase for my grandfather to build for me. Sometimes I don't compensate for the three-quarter-inch plywood. This time I did.
Ok, so five shelves at three-quarters of an inch apiece is, um . . . You start with one three-quarters and take one quarter from the next one so you've got one whole and one half, so you take that half and two of the next three quarters, and you've got another whole and one quarter left over, so you add that to the next three quarters, and that gives you one more whole and one three-quarters left over. The answer: three and three-quarters inches for the shelves. (Ta-da!)
The bookcase needed to be 5 feet tall. That's 60 inches. I know that because I am 5 feet 3 inches (162.5 cm), and according to my doctor, that's 63 inches, so three less (counting on my fingers) is 60.
It took me an hour and a half to figure out that 60 minus three and three-quarters divided by four left 14 and one-eighth OFF BEAT BETSY BIESENBACH inches for the shelves. So I went out to dinner with friends. I watched some TV. I went to bed. And a half hour later, I realized that one-fourth divided by four is one-sixteenth, not one-eighth. So I changed my plans and saved my bookcase from being one-half inch taller than I wanted. I think.
It would have been much easier if I could have just written to Grandpa and said: "Dear Grandpa, I need a bookshelf that is 1.5 meters high. (That's 150 centimeters.) Please use five sheets of 2 cm plywood for the shelves (that's 10 cm), so that each shelf will be 35 cm high.
Same goes for the socket set. The 10mm's too big? Use the 9mm. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
Right. Like Grandpa can get hold of 2 cm sheets of plywood. Heck, even the highway department can't decide how to go metric, much less when.
The reason Americans are so afraid of metrics is that we don't want to look stupid. We know how big a 12-inch ruler is. Take away the feet and inches, and we're totally lost.
We're also afraid of converting numbers. But who needs to? Have you ever figured out how many ounces there are in a 3-liter bottle of Coke? No, you just say, "Oooh, lookit the big bottle! I'll take it!"
How long will the number-numb of America have to wait before we can live in harmony with our brethren around the world? When will the U.S. Will they have to pry the yardsticks out of our cold, dead hands?
BETSY BIESENBACH is a contributor to this newspaper.
by CNB