a few SI observations

[Lester.Slaback@nist.gov]

1. Congress passed a law requiring conversion to metric (not quite SI, but
close), but with significant allowed exceptions which have obviously been
widely used.

2. NIST has an active program encouraging/proselytizing conversion to SI.
As previous comments have shown inertia is a large barrier.

3. Many area will probably never change, e.g., building stds, because of
the long lived installed based.

4. where conversions have happened very curious things happen, e.g., when
beverage container stds changed we went from the quart to the 0.75 liter.
How is that for a nice round unit quantity?

5.  NRC had the opportunity in 1994 with the new part 20 to invoke SI.
They caved in.  [Don't blame NIST.]

6.For the diehards there are the disaster stories like the Canadian plane
that ran out of fuel because a units conversion that was done incorrectly.

It will happen.  As industry becomes more international it retools in
metric. Most of our new instruments are available (or have built in) both
units.  IMHO in the HP community the conversion would be trivial.  Some
numbers become very nice, e.g., ....
    1 Sv   1 Sv/h     - BIG dose/dose rate
    1 mSv  1 mSv/h    - public dose limit, HRA
    1 uSv  1 uSv/h    - negligible dose/ dose rate

I even know of one golf course with the distances (can't say yardages,
metrages?) in meters!

Have a stimulating weekend.

-- 
the above are the personal ****musings**** of the author,
and do not represent any past, current, or future
position of NIST, the U.S. Government, or anyone else
who might think that they are in a position of authority.
NBSR Health Physics
NIST
Gaithersburg, MD 20899
301 975-5810
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Lester.Slaback@nist.gov
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