Metric units

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From: Ben Pittenger (benpittenger@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Sep 05 2002 - 07:34:51 PDT 

Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2002 07:34:51 -0700
From: "Ben Pittenger"<benpittenger@earthlink.net>
Subject: Metric units
Message-ID: <Springmail.0994.1031236491.0.76840000@webmail.pas.earthlink.net>

The meter (metre) was originally defined (in France) as one ten-millionth of
the earth's quadrant that passes through Paris. This was 1/10,000,000 of the
distance of the line of longitude from north pole to equator. The survey was
made, and this conceptual standard was transferred to a solid physical
standard in the form of platinum/iridium bars for physical presentation. The
original survey ended up being erroneous and after a couple of changes, the
meter is now approximately the same length, but officially defined as the
length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during the time interval of
1/299,792,458 of a second.

For references on the history of the metric system, see:

http://www.aticourses.com/international_system_units.htm

http://www.cftech.com/BrainBank/OTHERREFERENCE/WEIGHTSandMEASURES/MetricHistory.html

http://www.mel.nist.gov/div821/museum/length.htm

http://www.ex.ac.uk/cimt/dictunit/dictunit.htm

http://ts.nist.gov/ts/htdocs/200/202/lc1136a.htm

http://www.mc.cc.md.us/Departments/biotp/Metric.html

I love having my student groups become their own "countries," then create and
name their own "standard unit of measure," and then use some physical standard
to represent the unit. They then all measure their lab tables, and each
"country" puts their measurements on the board, with their own unit names. I
then run a fantasy exercise where one "country" orders school tables from
another (in order for the leader of the country to furnish a new school). The
students have roles, like commissioner of education, manufacturing czar, etc.
I pretend that the leader is trying to bolster his/her name by becoming a
great leader in education. Of course there is a mixup in communication and
when the tables arrive at the docks to be unveiled in front of the press and
the world, they are either far too large or far too small. The students love
it!

This sets the stage for an introduction of why standard units of measure (in
both a conceptual and physical sense) came in to existence. I follow this up
with a discussion of the history of measurement and the metric system.

Good luck to all in your new year!
Ben

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