Luke is building something and has made a rough drawing of it. He asked me if I would make a drawing on the computer. “Of course,” I said. I am always drawing house plans so I even have a ruler set up. Easy.
Only my rulers are set to measure by the inch, a pixel equals an inch. And he has all these measurements that are half inch (2×4’s for example, are actually 1 1/2 x 3 1/2) No problem. I shifted things around so a pixel is a half inch. Only he also has measurements that are 1/16 inch.
I am determined, so I started trying to set my ruler to measure smaller and smaller units. Soon I was so confused. There are 12 inches to a foot but inches are divided into divisions of 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.
I find myself remembering how, way back when I was in high school, they told us that the Unites States was fixing to go metric. Everyone groaned. We didn’t want to learn a whole new way of measuring and thinking of measurements. We knew approximately how much an inch or cup or pound was. Metric was a mystery.
But, the teacher told us how much better the metric system was because it is all based on 10. Everything, length, weight, volume… all measured in units of 10. I thought, “What an amazing idea!” I knew it would be a pain to adjust my thinking, to learn to think of an amount as a liter or millimeter, but what a pay-off! I would not have to divide and multiply by all these odd numbers for the rest of my life!!! I can divide and multiply 10’s in my head!
So I learned the metric system. I talked it up at home, told my mother the benefits. Of course, I realized, it would be harder for her and for people even older than her to learn to think in these new units, but we would! Once everything was measured in metric, we’d have to. And once we got the hang of it, it would be so much better.
Of course, I forgot the metric system. I never used it anywhere but math class. For 50 years, probably longer, we have been “going to go metric” but we never have. Water and soft drinks started selling in liters and I bet everyone has a good feel for how much a liter is now, but nothing else is sold in metric units. They might have a conversion to metric on the label, but, since it is easier to think in the units of measure we know, we ignore any other measures.
And here I sit trying to make a ruler, 12 units to a foot, 4 or 8 or 16 units to an inch. And I am thinking of how teaspoons are broken down to 1/8 and there are 3 teaspoons to a tablespoon and 4 tablespoons to 1/4 cup. All our measurements are needlessly complicated! It would be so much easier if we could divide an multiply everything by 10.