by Navendu Yajnik

Created on: March 03, 2009   Last Updated: March 24, 2009

In today' unipolar world, the status of Unites States as a world power is a given fact, but one that is being increasingly challenged. USA came to this position by sheer dint of continuous innovations, especially in the fields of science and technology. This country has the largest number of innovations and new technologies that had the power to transform whole societies, not only in the US but around the world. Two of the greatest inventions of the previous century - air travel and Internet, originated here. And yet, what is the knowledge level of an average American? Pathetic, to be most polite.

The average person on the street, including many who are supposedly college educated, can not do basic arithmetic. While that is a different topic by itself, one of the reasons for this state of things is our blind adherence to an old and obsolete system of measurements.

The system of measurements we use today came mostly from Britain, and Europe. Their measuring systems were based on everyday objects. For instance, fluid volumes were measured in barrels and drams, things that were used to store liquids. However, by the very nature of these things, there was no benchmark that was agreed upon by nations, and even among scientists. As a result, the scientific community across nations felt the need for standardization, and thus originated the metric system of measurements. The metric system was adopted as a standard in late 1780s in France and in no time became popular across Europe. (And we still stick to the old system in the 21st Century).

Among the basic physical entities that every one uses around the world are: length (or distance), mass (or weight), time and temperature. There are some more, like electric current, absolute amount of substance and luminous intensity, which are less used by ordinary people. Most other entities are combinations of these basic entities and can be derived by mathematical combinations of the basic entities. For example, area can be calculated by multiplying length of an object along two different directions. Speed is a division of length over unit time. Around the world, every one has adopted the by far superior Metric system of measurements for these entities. The converts to metric system include even Britain and rest of Europe, whose old (and now discarded by them) system of measurements we continue to use today. Here are some examples of the units we use in our old system. For distance we use inches, feet and miles. for mass, we use

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