sure
okay Brian i going to press number one and we'll go
okay
hey um uh Ronnie i think my first introduction to the metric system was in physics in college and i think prior to that i didn't even realize that another system existed
uh but it makes so darn much sense to me
over the English system i i i have a hard time understanding why people don't take to it
is it
well um
yeah i'd
i agree with the the ease in the use of it
and uh
the it certainly it's so much easier to do your do computations calculations to measure things with it to in every every aspect of it is simpler except there is one big stumbling block in it
and in the United States and that is all of the tool and die equipment in this country that has been here for the last hundred years is in the English system
yeah i understand
and tool and die equipment doesn't wear out too often
no no
so i think that's the the one place where
uh they will have a hard time uh getting people to change
yeah and i noticed that too in uh in uh uh metal stamp metal parts that we buy
we at one time went back through and dual dual dimensioned them all
uh-huh
and uh you know it's uh it's easy to put down point O O one inches or one mil
uh it's kind of difficult to have its metric equivalent
right
uh in in terms of the numbers that you've got to carry around i guess one of the things i i think metrically
i've got a uh a and it drives my wife crazy you know she'll say how far is it from here to somewhere she wants to go and i'll say oh about eight kilometers
uh-huh
and she'll look at me and give me this crazy look but my uh my my uh hobby is distance running
uh-huh
and basically all of the races are five K ten K fifteen K nobody runs in terms of miles anymore
sure
uh and i guess that's got me thinking metrically
also uh uh we have lived overseas From nineteen eighty one to eighty four we lived Quadalampor Malaysia
uh-huh
and for in eighty five six and seven we lived in Baggio City in the Philippines
uh-huh
and i guess you just get used to seeing distances beside the road marked metrically
exactly
and ultimately at some point you know it doesn't happen overnight but at some point your frame of reference is metric at least in terms of distances
right
right i uh lived in Brazil for four years from when i was seven to eleven years old and
so by the time i got into high school and took some physics there and then into college um where i was a physics major in college so i'm more than
uh familiar with the metric system
okay
and uh
but
i think that initial period you know from way made it familiar for me so i wasn't afraid of the metric system and and and i knew how much it made sense and how much easier it was to do things that way
so i i it's too bad that more Americans can't don't have the opportunity to to really use it
to to get to a point where it it's something other than something that causes them fear and confusion
because if you just
the initial in the initial stages of anything no matter even if it is something that ultimately will be simpler are going to be confusing
oh yes yes
and it's getting over that hurdle that will
yeah
finally get us into it if we ever get into it
yeah i i i don't think it's going to happen in in in our lifetime at least not in mine
uh i think uh there's a gigantic psychological barrier which may be a worse barrier than the old tool and die uh dimension in English
right
uh and i think that the uh the ultimate solution will be to start introducing it uh in at at the introduction to school
right
and uh hang on a sec Brian i got to get rid of that caller
okay
are you there
yep
okay i think the uh uh the solution is to start it at the earliest uh stages of schooling
and uh uh make that the system to which kindergartners and first graders are introduced
right
uh the drawback to that is i don't think we have any teachers in our other than physics teachers in our school system that are comfortable with it
right right that may be true also i don't know chemists seem to
and chemists that's what i got my first degree in chemistry too and i and you know we don't talk in quarts and pints we talk in liters and milliliters
it
okay
no
i mean can you imagine how ridiculous it would be to try to do calculations i mean it boggles the mind to try to think to do all the chemistry or physics in the English system at this point although gosh all those
oh yeah i i i don't think we could even think English and i'm just thinking now in our business you know we make we make chips and uh we assemble them though
uh-huh
and it's interesting we are uh uh basically talking well we talk about a package size yeah we talk about it in terms of uh uh six hundred mils or six tenths of an inch i guess we do that
but on the other hand we talk about the force that it takes uh to move a die out of a package in other words how much uh uh how how well do we have the die uh inhering to the to the base
uh-huh
and we talk about that in terms of kilograms
so we use it a lot we talk about uh gold ball bonds bond strength we talk about that in terms of grams or in terms of kilograms to push the uh push the ball off its substrate
so we we tend to have a mixed bag in new concepts uh that have come along with the electronic age i think just sort of get introduced metrically so that's the way we do it
right it's interesting in the in though the work i'm doing i'm uh
uh
uh the kind of things i do is manage uh research and development contracts and we do everything from
basic research all the way through uh we have a couple of systems that are actually um places where they're producing a product
and what i've noticed is that the places where they're kind of doing fuzzy thinking and uh
doing the initial uh
development of an idea use the metric system
and they talk in terms of metric uh uh units
in turn around the people however that have the engineers that are actually producing a product
do most of their carry conduct most of their discussion in terms of the English units
which i i find
uh-huh
it's interesting that it's like the guys that are still doing the work that are actually making the stuff are using the English system
but the ones that come up with the they're doing these theoretical analysis and the number crunching um
are doing it in terms of the metric system i i
it kind of seems strange
but
right you you mentioned just a side light here you mentioned you lived in Brazil whereabouts
and Sao Paulo
oh Sao Paulo our our plant there is in Cantinas
uh-huh
and i'm there several times a year
no kidding uh
and uh of course we fly into Sao Paulo and and drive on to uh uh Cantinas
and do you fly into Camgonias or the other one down there down so uth
uh i use the other one
yeah okay the international airport
i can't think the name of it
yeah the international airport because i i generally fly in from uh well the last two times i've come in from Mexico City via Menaus
yeah
uh-huh
and uh before that though it's uh it's uh Miami uh Rio De Janeiro Sao Paulo uh type flight
sure sure
and uh i just love it there i i absolutely uh uh uh love the i look forward to the times i go down there where did you get your from where did you get your physics degree
uh the Air Force Academy
uh i'm one of those
oh okay okay
yeah you like Colorado are are you a civilian employee about now or or military
yeah
no no i'm i'm still in the i'm still a second lieutenant
i just graduated in eighty nine
oh okay
oh okay okay you're you're you you're a bit younger than i thought uh back to the the metric system
uh-huh
i've got a uh an automobile an eighty six Buick Skylark that's got an odometer that's a digital odometer in both units in other words i can push a button and it's in metric and i can push a button and it's in English
uh-huh
uh-huh
and i i keep it in the metric uh all the all the time and we were taking another couple to a ball game last summer
uh-huh
and it was uh floating up there around a a a hundred a hundred which is about is about sixty two miles an hour and it was floating up there about a hundred and the wife of the couple looked at me she said my God slow down i didn't realize you were going this fast
right
and so we we you know we have a hard time getting people getting uh uh getting them to think metrically but
right
it's going to be a big psychological barrier and i don't think that we can educate kids all the way to their adulthood and then introduce it to them
right
because if we if we keep doing that it's it's not going to work
oh yeah
but
but but interestingly enough we think it makes sense to to think metrically with our money
oh yeah
you know ten cents makes a dime ten dimes makes a dollar uh which is basically thinking metrically
right
well the whole
but why twelve inches make a feet a foot and three feet make a yard i you know
yeah i don't
or the whole number system is digital so how can you have uh or it's it's base ten rather and so how can you have
yeah
how can you have these uh strange i i
