Re: SI Units - NOT!

[William V Lipton <liptonw@dteenergy.com>]

You bring up a good point.  The traditional, English units are based on
human-centered dimensions - i.e., quanitities that are used in the real world.
For example,1 yard was established as the distance from the king's nose to the
end of his extended hand.  An inch is approximately a thumb joint.  Similarly, 1
Curies was based on 1 gram of radium.  The units tend to be intuitive. For
example, 1 uCi is generally a small amount of activity, 1 mCi a medium amount,
and 1 Ci a lot.  Similarly, 1 mrem is a small exposure and 1 rem is a large
exposure.   I believe that this intuitive feel of the units, which is absent for
the contrived, SI units, is a significant factor in safety communication.  I
would need a better argument than I've seen so far to want to switch.  The
argument that we should switch because everyone else does it is definitely
absurd.  That's what I used to say, as a child, when caught doing something
wrong.  "But when I became a man, I put away childish things."  It didn't work
then, and it shouldn't work now, either.

The opinions expressed are strictly mine.
It's not about dose, it's about trust.

Bill Lipton
liptonw@dteenergy.com


"Jaramillo, Eric D" wrote:

> ***********************************************************
> For all those out there who don't like the traditional ways of radiation
> measurement in the US, if you don't like it, your more than welcome to get
> out of this backwards country and go to one of those third world countries
> and use all the SI units you want. I'm with the gentleman who said he
> wouldn't use SI units until Europe conquered the United States. Really, lets
> think about this, you take a small "sounding" number like 1Curie, and make
> it into a huge "sounding" number like 3.7E10 Becquerel (that's
> 37,000,000,000 Bq!!!) Oh yeah, I can really see the media playing this one
> for all its worth. As with all things, the language spoken and understood at
> the worker bee level doesn't necessarily have to be what the scientists use.
> Not all folks need to know direct translations. I think most would be happy
> with a simple scale of 0 to 10, with 0 meaning nothing is there, and 10
> meaning there is a lot of radiation or contamination there. Heck, I'm pretty
> happy if the workers know how to work in a radiological environment.
>
> My extreme apology to the rest of the list.
>
> Eric D. Jaramillo
> Sandia National Laboratories

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