If you were a rocket scientist working for NASA, would you be using the metric system?
Until about a month ago the short answer was no.
The U.S. space agency worked with 13 other space agencies around the world last year on ways to coordinate the study of the moon. Using a standard measuring system was one small step.
"When we made the announcement at the meeting, the reps for the other space agencies all gave a little cheer," Jeff Volosin, a NASA wonk, said in a news release.
And in their heart of hearts, science and math teachers and professors at high schools and colleges in Western Pennsylvania gave a little cheer, too. While metric is a standard element of high school science instruction, it has not been easy to make the lessons on liters, meters and grams stick.
"The first feeling students have is: Why?" said Terry Lewis, a chemistry and physics teacher at Jeannette High School. "After a while, they start realizing its benefits."
Students in Pennsylvania schools are exposed to the metric system throughout their education but since the concepts don't apply in their day-to-day lives, they lose the concepts and fall back on the English or British unit system of ounces, miles and pounds, instructors say.
As a result, they are forced to repeat the same lessons over and over again.
Katrina Brown, who has a doctorate in physics and is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, has grown accustomed to doing English-to-metric conversions in her head for the benefit of her students.
"I think they've heard of the terms; they've heard of a kilometer, they've heard of a Newton, they've heard of centimeters, but I don't think there's a good, intuitive feel for 'How far is a kilometer compared to a mile?'" Brown said. "When we do our physics problems, and they tell us something's going 80 kilometers per hour, I usually actually flip it into miles per hour and say, 'OK, this is equivalent to so many miles per hour,' because even though they know the term they don't really have a good feel for it."
Mark Stauffer, another professor at the Greensburg campus, said knowing the metric system is fundamental knowledge for students planning to work in industrial, government or clinical work.
"If they don't know how to use metric units and do conversions, they're going to be lost," said Stauffer, who also holds a doctorate.
Ashley Kocevar, a freshman at Pitt-Greensburg studying biology, said she learned the metric system early in her high school years but didn't need to apply it her senior year and had to relearn some of the concepts when she arrived at college.
"I really didn't remember that, because in high school I just memorized it for the course and then forgot it," the Hempfield graduate said.
Dr. Thad Zaleskiewicz, an emeritus physics professor at Pitt-Greensburg, is participating along with Brown and Stauffer in a multi-year study sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The Math Science Partnership brings together high school teachers and college professors with the goal of improving the effectiveness of high school education.
Zaleskiewicz said another frustration is that the English system is so much more complicated than metric.
"If you had a country where the metric system was the first language and you tried to teach them the English system, they would go absolutely bananas," he said. "We used to say that we're the biggest country in the world so we could essentially rule the world, and England was on our side. Well, now England's not on our side anymore, they're part of the (European) Union, which is metric. I think we're the only major country, including a lot of Third World countries, who still use the old British system."
The U.S. has pushed several times over the past 30 years to encourage use of the metric system. Jeannette's Lewis said one of the most substantial efforts was made in the 1970s, but it fell flat.
"Which proves you can't pass the law and that people are going to change," he said.
Pitt-Greensburg's Brown said when she was studying in North Carolina, the speed limit signs had both miles and kilometers on them.
"Can you imagine what people would do if all your signs on the Interstate -- 100 miles to Pittsburgh -- would suddenly change to kilometers? ... I think there'd be a huge resistance from the public," Brown said.
Zaleskiewicz said he's not sure there would be resistance.
"Aside from the fact that the American public is as obstreperous as it is, go to Canada," he said. "Everything's in kilometers per hour, and we don't seem to have thousands of people coming back and saying 'I'll never go to Canada again.'"
Zaleskiewicz said it won't necessarily be the science teachers or government, who must teach and encourage the use of the metric system, that ultimately will force the change.
"As long as it's voluntary, unless big business sees a reason that they're going to make more money by converting, they're not going to convert," he said. "It's like environmental issues. If they don't see a plus for them in becoming a green company, they won't do it."
The change is coming, slowly, the teachers agreed. Textbooks once written without regard to the metric system are not dominated by it. Soda is sold in 2-liter bottles. Automobile engines are now described in liters rather than cubic inches. Speedometers indicate both miles per hour and kilometers per hour.
When the change is made over to metric, life for science instructors will get just a little bit easier. And though it will take time, Pitt-Greensburg's Stauffer said, the benefits will be appreciated by everyone.
"That's the beauty of the metric system: Everything is based on powers of 10," he said. "It can't get any simpler than that. It's just a matter of working with the metric system and becoming familiar with its use. It's like a new language."
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