Meet the Metric System PDF Download

Author: Paul Ross Wallach
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780822444640
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 11

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Author: John Bemelmans Marciano
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 160819941X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
The intriguing tale of why the United States has never adopted the metric system, and what that says about us. The American standard system of measurement is a unique and odd thing to behold with its esoteric, inconsistent standards: twelve inches in a foot, three feet in a yard, sixteen ounces in a pound, one hundred pennies to the dollar. For something as elemental as counting and estimating the world around us, it seems like a confusing tool to use. So how did we end up with it? Most of the rest of the world is on the metric system, and for a time in the 1970s America appeared ready to make the switch. Yet it never happened, and the reasons for that get to the root of who we think we are, just as the measurements are woven into the ways we think. John Marciano chronicles the origins of measurement systems, the kaleidoscopic array of standards throughout Europe and the thirteen American colonies, the combination of intellect and circumstance that resulted in the metric system's creation in France in the wake of the French Revolution, and America's stubborn adherence to the hybrid United States Customary System ever since. As much as it is a tale of quarters and tenths, it is a human drama, replete with great inventors, visionary presidents, obsessive activists, and science-loving technocrats. Anyone who reads this inquisitive, engaging story will never read Robert Frost's line “miles to go before I sleep” or eat a foot-long sub again without wondering, Whatever happened to the metric system?

Author: Paul I. Wallach
Publisher: Lake Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780822444633
Category : Metric system
Languages : en
Pages : 91

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Author: Glenn F. Leslie
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780345252463
Category : Metric system
Languages : en
Pages : 67

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Hector and Millie Meter and their dog, Killer Meter, explain the metric system. Reference sections and conversion cards are included.

Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Metric system
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Author: Dr. Glenn Leslie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Metric system
Languages : en
Pages :

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Here's a fun way to understand the metric system. Meet Hector Meter, Millie Meter and their dog Killer Meter.

Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Manufactures Committee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Manufactures
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 630

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Author: Ken Alder
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 074324902X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
In June 1792, amidst the chaos of the French Revolution, two intrepid astronomers set out in opposite directions on an extraordinary journey. Starting in Paris, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre would make his way north to Dunkirk, while Pierre-François-André Méchain voyaged south to Barcelona. Their mission was to measure the world, and their findings would help define the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance between the pole and the equator—a standard that would be used “for all people, for all time.” The Measure of All Things is the astonishing tale of one of history’s greatest scientific adventures. Yet behind the public triumph of the metric system lies a secret error, one that is perpetuated in every subsequent definition of the meter. As acclaimed historian and novelist Ken Alder discovered through his research, there were only two people on the planet who knew the full extent of this error: Delambre and Méchain themselves. By turns a science history, detective tale, and human drama, The Measure of All Things describes a quest that succeeded as it failed—and continues to enlighten and inspire to this day.

Author: Ernst Lange
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Metric system
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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