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metrication
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January 1, 2010 deadline
St Lucia will soon turn away from the old Imperial System of measurements and usher in the international system of units; the Metric System. The metric system is not entirely new to the island; over the past few years St Lucia has been using both the imperial and metric systems of measurements. It isn’t the first time a transition from the imperial to metric system has been attempted.
In 1978, St Lucia’s then metrication committee took the first steps to move towards the international system of measurements. Their achievements included the inclusion of the metric system in school programs. Back then there was no obligation for the commercial sector to adopt the metric system but now with the European Union’s January 1st deadline for the metric system to be put in place, further steps have been taken to fully implement the metric system.
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New SI derived unit
ISO has just published a new version of the SI Guide, a small manual for the use of the SI, the International System of Units (Système International d’Unités). ISO SI Units Guide
The SI is a comprehensive metric and decimal system based on units and derived units. The seven base units are: length, mass, time, electric current, thermodynamic temperature, amount of substance, and luminous intensity.
This new edition of the SI Guide includes for the first time:
one new SI derived unit: the katal, symbol kat (1 kat = 1 mol/s) for the quantity of catalytic activity – essentially used in clinical chemistry, it can also be used in other fields of chemistry
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The Metric System in the U.S.
In 1866, Congress authorized the use of the metric system in this country and gave each state a set of standard metric weights and measures.In 1875, the United States firmed its commitment to the development of the internationally recognized metric system by becoming one of the original seventeen signatory nations to the Treaty of the Meter. In 1893, metric standards, developed through international cooperation were adopted as the fundamental standards for length and mass in the United States.
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It could have been an ugly
Pounds, kilograms, what’s the difference? Quite a lot when you’re 41,000 feet in the air and your Boeing 767 runs out of fuel because you used the wrong units to figure out how much fuel to put in.
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