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Author: Imraan Coovadia Publisher: Ohio University Press ISBN: 0821445642 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 339
Book Description
In Tales of the Metric System, Coovadia explores a turbulent South Africa from 1970 into the present. He takes his home country’s transition from imperial to metric measurements as his catalyst, holding South Africa up and examining it from the diverse perspectives of his many characters. An elite white housewife married to a radical intellectual; a rock guitarist; the same guitarist’s granddaughter thirty years later; a teenaged boy at the mercy of mob justice—each story takes place over one of ten days across the decades, and each protagonist has his own stakes, her own moment in time, but each is equally caught in the eddies of change. Tales of the Metric System is clear eyed, harrowing, and daring.
Author: Imraan Coovadia Publisher: Ohio University Press ISBN: 0821445642 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 339
Book Description
In Tales of the Metric System, Coovadia explores a turbulent South Africa from 1970 into the present. He takes his home country’s transition from imperial to metric measurements as his catalyst, holding South Africa up and examining it from the diverse perspectives of his many characters. An elite white housewife married to a radical intellectual; a rock guitarist; the same guitarist’s granddaughter thirty years later; a teenaged boy at the mercy of mob justice—each story takes place over one of ten days across the decades, and each protagonist has his own stakes, her own moment in time, but each is equally caught in the eddies of change. Tales of the Metric System is clear eyed, harrowing, and daring.
Author: John Bemelmans Marciano Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 160819941X Category : Mathematics Languages : en Pages : 418
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: Imraan Coovadia Publisher: ISBN: 9781415207239 Category : South Africa Languages : en Pages : 388
Book Description
"From a Natal boarding school in the seventies and Soviet spies in London in the eighties to the 1995 Rugby World Cup and intrigue in the Union Buildings, Tales of the Metric System shows how ten days spread across four decades send tidal waves through the lives of ordinary and extraordinary South Africans alike."--Dust jacket.
Author: Alex Hebra Publisher: JHU Press ISBN: 9780801870729 Category : Weights and measures Languages : en Pages : 242
Book Description
Will draw readers interested in recreational math. Hebra emphasizes how quantities are defined and derived from basic units, and converted from one system to another... Good fun for the numerically minded.Booklist
Author: S. Carl Hirsch Publisher: Viking Children's Books ISBN: Category : Juvenile Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 136
Book Description
Discusses the creation and development of the metric system and explains why its adoption by the United States is both inevitable and desirable.
Author: Brian P. Cleary Publisher: Lerner Digital ™ ISBN: 1512478784 Category : Juvenile Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 32
Book Description
Audisee® eBooks with Audio combine professional narration and text highlighting for an engaging read aloud experience! In this wacky look at weight, Brian P. Cleary and Brian Gable introduce essential measurement units—from grams to pounds to tons. The comical cats of the wildly popular Words Are CATegorical® series show how to measure trucks, trains, ducks, cranes, and more. Peppy rhymes, goofy illustrations, and kid-friendly examples make light work of this heavy topic.
Author: Imraan Coovadia
Author: Imraan Coovadia
Author: 
Author: John Bemelmans Marciano
Author: Imraan Coovadia
Author: Alex Hebra
Author: S. Carl Hirsch
Author: 
Author: Brian P. Cleary
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Manufactures Committee
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Manufactures