(a) as a raw engineering graduate I spent about two months playing with a whole bunch of different systems to acquire a comfortable understanding of, and facility for, conversions which the undergraduate system had only addressed imperfectly.
(b) I don't see the role of the education institutions being to waste time on teaching other than the principles of unit conversion .. the former is an Industry, rather than Institution, concern. (Genghis will have his own views on this but that is another matter). It makes a lot of sense for the institution courses to use one consistent set of units .. doesn't matter much which set but that which is closest to standard in the particular country makes a good starting point ...
(c) all of us get rapidly comfortable with that set of conversion factors which we use day in day out. The important thing is to be VERY comfortable with deriving those units .. how many times have we had to do just that because the list of data conveniently to hand didn't have the one conversion we needed just then ?
(d) the Industry workload imposed by use of a multiplicity of units is both silly and dangerous, especially when something unusual is happening (isn't that more common than we might like ?) and the folk involved are in the normal pressure cooker environment to get the bird out on time.
(e) if one is going to use multiple systems, such should be done with procedural rigour.
(f) the Gimli Glider has been mentioned and there are numerous other happy- and not-so-happy-ending story equivalents around the traps.
(g) working up conversions rigorously doesn't take much nous in maths but it does call for pedantic housekeeping.
(h) and I think that most of us old codgers are desperately worried about the new chum (ie last 10-15 years) who is trained to push buttons with all the attendant GIGO risks .....
.. and it does keep life interesting periodically coming across new, bigger and brighter boxes of units from time to time.
But I am a bit confused on one point .. who doesn't use slugs ? Whatever is the world coming to ?
Last edited by john_tullamarine; 5th Mar 2006 at 22:51.