8
Tuesday, March 9, 1976
University Daily Kansan
Lawrence inches toward metric system conversion
By JANET SCHMIDT Staff Writer
Use of the metric system has been authorized by law in the United States since July 28, 1866, yet this country remains the only major one not using metrics as
the standard system of weights and measures.
This may change, however, because of recent enactment of a law authorizing a nationwide conversion to the International Law Institute, a decimal system based on units of 10.
Staff Photo by JAY KOELZER
Afternoon concert
Kathy Needham, Overland Park freshman, was given a new Flute Sunday night, and she found it hard to put down when Monday rolled around. Between classes she found time to play the flute.
Demand for cubicles in Watson declining
Study cubicles are available at Watson library but may not provide the solitude sought from a nagging roommate or an apartment's paper-thin walls.
"This semester the demand for the cubicles has gone down significantly," Nancy Bengel, head of the library's circulation department, said yesterday. "But the number of students to study in Sometimes one floor can be 90 degrees and the one below it is 6."
Bengal said any student "doing serious research" could apply for one of the 150 cubicles spread through the library's eight floors. Most cubicles are requested by graduate students or seniors doing special honors research papers, she said.
MOST CURICLES are shared by two or three students and are assigned on a first come, first served basis, Bengal said. The upper floors are taken first, she said.
"Once you get a cubicle that you fancy you can reenrue it every semester if you like it. I had a doctoral candidate who've been held up in the same cubicle for the last four or five
One advantage of having a cubicle is that books may be checked out and stored there for an entire semester. Anyone may consult a book charged to a cubicle but the book can't be removed until it has been in the cubicle three weeks. Bengel said.
Though many of the cubicle shelves overflow with notebooks, journals and texts, Bengel said the number of books checked in his office had decreased by 2,200 since last semester.
Personal belongings aren't supposed to be left in the nobs, Bengel said, but an assortment of empty soda cans and candy bar wrappers dot the cubicles.
STILL, SHE said, "Some of these people have over 100 books in their little nooks."
She said trespassing students generally respected the rights of the cubicle holders.
John Kailer, Albuquerque junior, agreed.
"A guy upstairs just told me that I was sitting in his 'personal desk,' Keller said, while he are a sandwich in a seventh floor room. "It's not sure if you say to the guy? I had to get up and split."
According to Public Law 95-168, enacted in December 1975, the present U.S. Customary System, or English system of measurement, gradually will be replaced by the metric system under a voluntary conversion plan. Although the law doesn't mandate this change, Standards has stated that conversion could be made easily during a 10-year period.
Despite this law, Lelon Capps, associate dean of the School of Education, said last week that he doubted the change to the metric system would occur within the 10-year period, and that metrics wouldn't replace English measure for another 30 years.
METRICS WON'T be used extensively on a national basis as long as conversion is made.
"The law has no teeth in it," he said. "What is needed is some form of legislation making use of the metric system mandatory."
"People are naturally going to go with what's easier, and it's easier to stick with what works."
The metric system has existed in the United States, side by side with the U.S. Customary System, for more than 100 years.
Metrics is the only system that has received specific legislative sanction by Congress, under the Law of 1866, which states, "It shall be lawful throughout the United States of America to employ the metric system" and measures of the metric system."
THE UNITED STATES WAS among the signatories of the 1875 Treaty of the Meter, which established the metric system at the national Conference of Weights and Measures.
Metrics was first adopted by France. Since 1875 it has become a universal system of measurement that is mandatory for all purposes in many countries.
In 1960, at the 11th General Conference of Weights and Measures, the metric system became the International System (SI), a more complete and standardized system of measurements. In 1964, this system was adopted by the States by the National Bureau of Standards.
However, not until legal Law 95-168 has the United States adopted a concrete plan for its future development.
According to Cappa, industry will be the most influential factor affecting the impact of climate change.
He said the educational system would also influence the changeover, but only when it was combined with the standard use of metrics in society.
"IT DOES LITTLE good to teach the metric system in the schools and then send the students out to work in a society that isn't even using it." Capsis said.
He said that many of the major in-
stries, such as Motosys, had already implemented plans for conversion, but the smaller industries were still back and weren't using megaGets at all.
This situation seems to be true for most of the businesses in Lawrence.
Hawk, manager of the University Shop, 1420 Crest, said that his clothing store wasn't using the metric system, and that he had purchased it for the other clothing stores in Lawrence.
The trade journals for the clothing industry include only warnings or vague references to the metric system, he said, as "We'll have to make the change now."
"EVEEN THE SHIPMENTS from overseas have been converted to English measure by the time they arrive here," Hack said.
Barry McWilliams, manager of Wickes Lumber, 1013 N. Third, said that the lumber industry nationwide still used English measurements.
He said he had read about the metric system in the lumber industry's trade journals, but the articles had only mentioned that the change to metrics would occur.
Louie Leiwis, owner of Lawrence Toyota, 2300 W. 29 Terrace, said that the metric system had always been used in his cars. He said foreign cars were produced on metric names.
"I had thought a lot more emphasis would be placed on it." McWilliams said.
He said tools were also in metric measure, but fluids for the cars, such as oil, were still labeled according to English measures.
"IT'S A MATTER of educating the people," Lewis said.
As far as the Lawrence school system is concerned, the metric educational process requires students to be able to
Capsa said that the University would be starting workshops with Lawrence school teachers, but that the real answer to the question is whether the identification of texts using the metric system.
"Metrics is a very logical system. There are three units and six prefixes . . . "
"The problem lies with textbook adoption. We uniform textbooks using only the metric system."
Capps said that although the School of Education stressed the importance of teaching the metric system, student teachers were often prevented from using it by the individual schools or school systems once they started teaching.
"A statewide board to govern the use of texts and the teaching of the metric system is needed," he said. "California and aalfred other states have already done this."
He said that Chancellor Archie R. Dykes and the School of Education had talked to Gov. Robert B. Bennett about establishing a program that nothing concrete had been decided yet.
MARTHA GAGE, instructor in elementary math methods, said that most educators agreed the metric system should be taught as a way of measuring that is separate and different from the English system.
She said that teachers should show their students only gross comparisons between the two systems, for example: one liter equals approximately one quart, and that they shouldn't have students solving involving measurement conversions.
Gage, who instructs elementary school student teachers, said that many of her students are very good at math.
She said she to show them that metrics is a very easy system because it is
"ONCE THEY are able to correlate it with the systems they already know, they see how easy the metric system really is," she told me. "We're prised and feel more conjecturable using it."
based on groupings of ten, as are our place-value system and monetary system.
"Metrics is a very logical and interrelated system," Gage said. For linear, weight and liquid measure, there are only three units (meter, gram and liter) and six prefaces (deca, heca, klo, colo, centi and milli), which go with all of the units.
"It's just a matter of learning some new tricks and plugging them into the appropriate one."
Gage said that some of the aids used to teach metrics at the elementary school level were a meter stick, a trundle wheel (a meter stick), or a measure of one meter) and a metric abacus.
Walter Scott Smith, assistant professor of education, who teaches elementary science methods, said that metrics had always been used in the sciences.
"METRICS IS naturally a part of the courses I teach because most science texts use the metric system exclusively, or along with English measure." Smith said.
He said he tried to teach his students to visualize" metric units by having them use a ruler. He also gave was: How many meters is it between the front door of Bailey Hall and the front of
Some of the difficulty students have with the metric system can be linked to basic problems in their mathematical skills, Smith said.
"Many students use the conventional numbers by rote," he said. "When they are introduced to the new units, they hung them and they don't understand what they're doing."
"It's a matter of learning new words for old problems."
Although it seems to vary from teacher to teacher and from school to school, many students in the Lawrence school system have been introduced to metric measurement.
SMITT SAID that the Science Curriculum Improvement Study (SCIS), a program using science kits with only the metric system, was in its second year of official use in the Lawrence school system. Some teachers were being used it for several years, he said.
SCIS is used at all grade levels and has kits for both the physical and biological sciences, Smith said. However, because of the low demand only the physical science program, he said.
"It costs approximately $200 to set up one classroom." Smith said.
He said that only 50 per cent of the classes across the country used SCIS, but that he thought more than 50 per cent of the Lawrence schools were using it.
Janet Luch, a math teacher for the first through third grades at St. John's School, 1208 Kentucky, said she taught the metric system and was working with the English system of measures.
She said her approach to metrics in the
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classroom was to teach it as simply another wav of measuring.
LUCH SAID that her students didn't think the metric system was hard to learn because they were young enough that they understood the terms of equivalents to English measures.
"Teaching conversion from metric measure to English measure is hard," she said, "and I don't know that they would really need to know how to convert."
Judy Randolph, who teaches geometry and algebra at Lawrence High School, said that most of her students had already been transferred to the metric system in earlier grades.
Randolph said that the boys were generally more appreciative of the system, especially after the crash.
"They're not really enthusiastic about using it, though, because they learned it by solving conversion problems and found it tedious," she said.
She said she emphasized the logic of metrics and tried to show the students that
SHERRY SCHMIDT, who teaches first grade at EIA Elementary School, said that her students learned both the metric and the standard measure, but that she taught them separately.
Schmidt said many teachers didn't match the metric system even when it was taught.
the English system is actually more confusing.
"Teaching conversion is hard, and I don't think they need to know how . . . "
"Adults should make their minds a blank slate—go back to first grade—and forget about trying to understand metric measure in terms of English equivalents," she said.
"Many of them are afraid of it," she said. "It depends upon their age—teachers in their fifties and sixties don't want to touch it with a ten-foot pole."
Schmidt said the important thing to remember for those who are too old to benefit from an introduction to metrics in grade school, or who find the idea of conversion a little scary, was that metrics was simply another, different way of measuring.
"THEIR RATIONALE is that metrics is either too difficult, or that they'll be retiring soon so it doesn't matter anyway because they'll never have to use it."
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