One topic mentioned in the metric article in the Tempo section Jan. 11 is that many Americans oppose the metric system. The article did not deal with causes of opposition, but one of them is that a goodly number of people believe the metric system to be confusing and difficult.
Why anyone would believe that metric–deliberately constructed as a rational, lucid system–is difficult is quite a puzzle! But let`s look further. Many publicists either inadvertently or deliberately have been able to make metric appear awkward. One example of such misleading (and usually unrecognized) publicity is to be found in The Tribune illustration accompanying the metric article:
The picture shows a child with her height at age 5 (3 1/2 feet), age 7 (4 feet) and age 10 (5 feet). Along with height in feet, the captions give 1.05 meters at age 5, 1.22 meters at age 7 and 1.52 meters at age 10.
Notice the unspoken assumption underlying these data: Because feet are
”true” units of measure, any child will be an even 1/2, 4 or 5 feet tall at various ages; converting these ”true” units into their metric equivalents of course gives awkward numbers such as 1.05, 1.22 or 1.52. Naturally, then, many people think metric is difficult because every time they see it presented in an American publication, they see it in terms of messy numbers! By the way, I just measured my grandaughter and found her height to be exactly 1 meter–or, if you prefer, 3 feet, 3 3/8 inches.
