Every day is a metric day at the National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST). But that won’t stop the agency from celebrating
Metric Week, held annually the week of Oct. 10—the tenth day of the
tenth month.
 |
|
Credit: NIST |
This year marks the 34th annual celebration of Metric Week. Begun by
the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics on May 10, 1976,
approximately one year after the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, Metric
Week serves as an opportunity for teachers, students and the public to
learn about the metric system, also known as the international system of
units, or SI for short, and promote its use.
The U.S. government formally adopted SI, long the standard
measurement system of science and engineering, as the preferred system
of weights and measures for commerce and industry. Projects and plans
created for the U.S. government use metric. According to Elizabeth
Gentry, who serves as a metric coordinator at NIST, many, if not most,
industries in the U.S. use metric units internally, the better to serve
international customers. Many manufacturers only perform conversions to
U.S. customary units when packaging their products for domestic sale.
Adoption of SI is voluntary and many products are sold with dual unit
(customary and metric labeling) in the United States, but many countries
only recognize the metric system and do not allow products to be
labeled with anything other than SI, requiring many industries to
maintain separate inventories for domestic and international sale.
Based on units of ten, SI is very easy to learn, and many Americans
know it better than they think. Many products, from bottled drinks to
medicines, are already sold and conversed about in terms of their metric
measures.
This year, representatives from the NIST Metric Program will be
celebrating Metric Week with more than 4,000 students and teachers at
the Science and Technology Education Partnership (STEP) conference in
Riverside, Calif. Teachers and students who are interested in learning
more about SI may download a variety of educational materials from NIST:
- Education Resources – http://www.nist.gov/ts/wmd/metric/education.cfm
- Everyday Estimation – http://www.nist.gov/ts/wmd/metric/estimation.cfm
- Metric Units of Measurement – http://www.nist.gov/ts/wmd/metric/metric-units.cfm
- Unit Conversions – http://www.nist.gov/ts/wmd/metric/unit-conversion.cfm
- Measurements in Sports – http://www.nist.gov/ts/wmd/metric/sports.cfm
Teachers can also request a classroom set of SI educational materials by
submitting their contact information and grade level to TheSI@nist.gov.
More information about Metric Week can be found at these sites:
- National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) http://www.nctm.org/news/content.aspx?id=10248
- NCTM Position – Teaching the Metric System for America’s Future http://www.nctm.org/about/content.aspx?id=6346
- National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Position – Use of the Metric System http://www.nsta.org/about/positions/metric.aspx
- U.S. Metric Association – Metric Week http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/metric-week.html
Media Contact: Mark Esser, mark.esser@nist.gov, 301-975-8735
