For many, recalling their mathematics classes can be
harrowing. The horror of theorems, formulae as well as calculus, integration
and differentiation, and those strange yet scary symbols—that snaky integral
and spooky summation—had created intractable mazes and hard-to-solve equations.
When these monsters are kept aside, among topics covered in the syllabus, it
seemed, units and their conversion were the easiest. All you needed was a
simple division or multiplication to convert from unit to another, for example
for a temperature conversion.
However, conversely, in the real world, unit
conversion for centuries had been a source of confusion among traders, the scientific
community, and academics, as almost all great civilizations have their own
system.
When it was realized that the variations in the
measurements of units, especially around the Second World War, as the UK and
the USA allied to defeat Germany, is leading to a number of issues in the war.
A famous example is of a nut and bolt; at that time, the UK and the USA had
their own system, a nut and bolt made in the US was rendered useless in the UK.
In the times of war, simple temperature conversion such as Celsius toFahrenheit could lead to bigger problems, triggering dominoes effect.
Later with the conclusion of the war, a number of
conferences were organized to make units uniform all around the world.
Governments and organization were made aware of
benefits of a uniform unit system. The concerted efforts lead to the formulation
of the metric system. It has following advantages.
·
In the metric system, it is made
sure that the measuring units are interlinked. The units are multiples of 10 or
divisible by 10, making it easier to interchange.
·
Probability of error is low, as fractions
were discarded for the decimal system.
·
It led the global compatibility of machines
and machine parts. Parts made in the UK can be easily used in Italy, and vice
versa. This standardization gave a major push to the world trade.
·
It helped the scientific community
the most, as lab appliances as well as publishing papers became easy.
