British Units

Unfortunately for students who have grown up in the US, the much more complicated British system of units is still in use here and in only one other country in the world: Myanmar (formerly, Burma.) The metric system with its very simple conversions has never taken hold in everyday use in the U.S. as it has in Britain and Canada, for example.

In the sciences, however, use of the metric, and particularly SI units, is a necessity. You will find that the equations of physics almost always give wrong answers if the quantities are not expressed in SI units. If you want to find a textbook that uses British units, FORGET IT! There hasn't been one published in 20 years at least. In these books the unit of force was the pound, and the unit of mass was the "slug."

Some educator studying the differences between the performances of middle and high school students on standardized international tests actually find that the scores of US students are lower than those of students from other countries due to the fact that the cumbersome British unit system is so ingrained in them.

So, even though this may seem uncomfortable at first, let's use the proper SI units in this course.