Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

Fantasy Football Challenge - Library of Books for Football Fanatics

Fantasy Football Challenge presents
Popular Science Monthly

100 of 119

Second, every REDUCTION is made almost instantaneously by merely moving the decimal point. There are no reductions performed by multiplying by 1,728 or 5,280, etc., or dividing by 5 1/2, 30 1/4 or 31 1/2, etc., and hence there is A GREAT SAVING in the labor and time of making necessary calculations. Third, there are but FIVE tables in the metric system proper, these taking the place of from twelve to fifteen in our system (or lack of it). These are linear, square, cubic, capacity and weight. Fourth, any one table is about as easy to learn as our United States money table, and after one is learned, it is much easier to learn the others, since the same prefixes with the same meanings are used in all. Fifth, the weights of all objects are either known directly from their size, or can be very quickly found from their specific gravities. Sixth, the subject is made so much easier for children in school that a conservative expert estimate of the saving is two thirds of a year in a child's school life. The rule in this country is eight years of arithmetic, the arithmetic occupying about one fourth of the child's activity. With metric arithmetic substituted for ours, what it now takes two years to prepare for, could be easily done in 1 1/3 years. This involves an enormous waste of money and energy every twelvemonth. Seventh, only ONE set of measures and ONE set of weights are needed to measure and weigh everything, and ONE set of machines to make things for the world's use. There would be no duplication of costly machinery to enter the foreign trade field, thus securing enormous saving. It is well known that the United States and Great Britain have lost a vast amount of foreign commerce in competition with Germany and France, because of their non-use of the metric units. Britain realizes this and is greatly concerned over the situation. Eighth, every ordinary practical problem can be solved conveniently on an adding machine. Our adding machines are used almost solely for United States money problems. Ninth, no valuable time is lost in making reductions from common to metric units, or vice versa, either by ourselves or foreigners. To make our sizes in manufactured goods concrete to them foreign customers have to reduce our measures to theirs and this is a weariness to the flesh. Tenth, the metric system is wonderfully simple. All the tables with a rule to make all possible reductions can be put on a postal card.[1] [1] See article by the writer in Education (Boston), Dec., 1894. The metric weights and measures constitute a SCIENTIFIC SYSTEM; our weights and measures are a DISORGANIZATION. Naturally one can expect a GREAT SAVING OF TIME, THOUGHT AND LABOR from the use of a system, and this is the fact. If one dared introduce ordinary arithmetical problems into an article like this, it would be easy to show by examples how a person has to be something of a master of common fractions in order to solve in our system common every-day problems, whereas in the metric system nearly everything is done very simply with decimals. In our system a mechanic after making a complicated calculation with common fractions is as likely as not to get his result in sixths, or ninths, etc., of an inch, whereas his rule reads to eighths, or sixteenths, and he must reduce his sixths, or ninths, to eighths, or sixteenths, before he can measure off his result. In the metric system results always come out in units of the scale used. The metric system measures to millimeters or to a unit a trifle larger than a thirty-second of an inch. In our system one is likely to avoid sixteenths or thirty-seconds on account of the labor of calculation. Then, besides, the amount of figuring is so much less in the metric system. Take the case of a certain problem to find the cubical contents of a box. Our solution calls for 80 figures and the metric for 35, and this is a typical case, not one specially selected. Thus, metric calculations, while only from one third to two thirds as long, are likely to be two or three times as accurate, are far easier to understand, and the results can be immediately measured off. Hence, we waste time in these four ways. Shakespeare in Hamlet says: "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all." In like vein it might be said: Thus custom (in weights and measures) doth make April fools of us all. It is no exaggeration to say that counting grown-ups solving actual problems and children solving problems in school we are sent on much more than a billion such April fool errands round Robin Hood's barn every year. Noting how much time is saved in making simple every-day calculations by using the metric system, suppose that we assume of the 60 or more millions of adults in active life in this country, on the average only one in 60 makes such calculations daily and that only twenty minutes' time is saved each day. Let us suppose that the value of the time of the users is put at $2.40 per day or 10 cents for 20 minutes. Then 1,000,000 users would save $100,000 per day or $30,000,000 per year. But perhaps some one is saying that much of this time is not really saved, since many persons are paid for their time and can just as well do this work as not. The answer to this is that in many instances such calculations take the time of OTHERS as well as the person making the calculation. Occasionally a contractor might hold back, or work to a disadvantage a gang of a score of workmen while trying to solve a problem that came up unexpectedly. An estimate of the value of all weighing and measuring instruments places the sum at $150,000,000. Thus, we see that in five years, merely by a saving in TIME--for time is money--all metric measuring and weighing instruments could be got NEW at no extra expense. This estimate of the cost of replacing our weighing and measuring instruments by new metric ones and of saving time has been made by others with a similar result. A matter of very much more importance than that just discussed is the extra unnecessary expense put upon education, viz., two thirds of a year for every child in the land. Presumably if the metric system were in use with us, all our children would stay in school as long as they now do, thus getting two thirds of a year farther along in the course of study. Actually, if

100 of 119 pages. Go to page:

Go to this Book's Directory Page