RE: Bq soon

["Bjorn Cedervall" <bcradsafers@HOTMAIL.COM>]

>  We have the classical system that works.

No it doesn't, some Americans don't understand it. They just don't do the 

necessary calculations and replace them by guess work (I spent 3.5 years in 

the U.S.). Others deselect science just because of the units.



It was interesting to see that sentence about buying meat because that is 

exactly the only real problem I had in the U.S. - without a calculator I 

just look at the piece if it is something that goes beyond the pound level 

(are you really happy with those different kinds of ounces?). Otherwise it 

has generally been no problem having two systems referring to. I do 

understand that costs can be an argument against comversion.



I would do a conversion in steps, the first being replacing gallons by 

liters, one gallon is just a little less than 4 liters so liters cannot be 

difficult to understand. Let that stabilize for 15 years or so - then people 

will ask for the kilo when they realize how smart it is with the liters. 

Many here in Sweden routinely switch/convert between three exchange rates 

(SEK - Swedish crowns, Euros and USD) - there is no real problem and here we 

are not even dealing with a constant in the conversion. Quite a few of us do 

look forward to a Euro for Sweden as well - it will only take us some 2 to 6 

months to get used to it and not even think about it any more (like moving 

to a foreign country and using another currency).



What we are talking about for many of the units are linear conversions. 

Suppose that we are buying apples (of the same weight) and there are 4 

apples per kilo (kg). Now we want to by 2 kg of apples so there are two ways 

of expressing it: Either buy 2 kg or buy 8 apples. This is the level of 

understanding that is required. Most 11 years olds can do it. Only a simple 

conversion factor to use.





>We should ask some of the Canadians how the general population feels about 

>buying their gasoline in liters or their meat by the kilogram, and how 

>about temperatures?



I can't understand that this is an argument.

As already said, I understand the cost argument however.



Take the following: How many of you understand immediately 1/16384 of an 

inch - just to follow the binary division logic? Compare with an expression 

like 0.001 mm which most metric oriented people can get some sense of 

immediately.



I yesterday encountered mg for magnetic fields BTW :-(



My personal ideas only,



Bjorn Cedervall    bcradsafers@hotmail.com

PS. One gram of radium is not a good basis because of the different isotopes 

and also because of the daughter products - a definition based on one gram 

of Ra can thus easily be misunderstood. One Bq is one event per second. That 

can never be difficult for anyone.







_________________________________________________________________

Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. 

http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail



************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,

send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the text "unsubscribe

radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line.

You can view the Radsafe archives at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/