The United States should officially adopt the metric system. The metric system has straight-forward, easy-to-remember names and conversions which makes it less stressful for high school students who are trying to finish their math homework. How many meters are in 15 kilometers? 15 000 meters! Easy. Meanwhile, those american kids are sobbing over a "How many feet are in a yard?" question. Poor saps. With the imperial system, you are given the painstakingly, difficult task of Googling a conversion program, which takes so much time and effort that instead of doing it you just sit down on your floor and cry. Or you walk with one foot in front of the other, like a tight-rope performer, across your front yard to see how many "feet" are in a "yard." The rest of the world must be pretty frustrated with the imperial system, too. The United States is one of the super countries on earth and a lot of great stuff comes from it. Amazing recipes, for example, are abundant in the US. Have you recently found a recipe for a delicious, diabetes-inducing fudge pie? Well, the recipe's in imperial, so you'll have to convert the whole thing and even then the measurements will be slightly whacked so it probably won't be the exact, wondrous fudge pie you dreamed of making. If those stubborn Americans would just let go of the past and embrace the beauty of metric, we'd all be eating pie and getting heart disease right now.
Some people are really great at math. And some people are truly incredible writers. As a math teacher, I tend to see more of the former than the latter (obviously). But, every now and then, I give an assignment that DOES require writing, and it's always a treat to read something like the following (keep in mind, this is only the first third of the essay. And the other two paragraphs are just as good as this one):
The United States should officially adopt the metric system. The metric system has straight-forward, easy-to-remember names and conversions which makes it less stressful for high school students who are trying to finish their math homework. How many meters are in 15 kilometers? 15 000 meters! Easy. Meanwhile, those american kids are sobbing over a "How many feet are in a yard?" question. Poor saps. With the imperial system, you are given the painstakingly, difficult task of Googling a conversion program, which takes so much time and effort that instead of doing it you just sit down on your floor and cry. Or you walk with one foot in front of the other, like a tight-rope performer, across your front yard to see how many "feet" are in a "yard." The rest of the world must be pretty frustrated with the imperial system, too. The United States is one of the super countries on earth and a lot of great stuff comes from it. Amazing recipes, for example, are abundant in the US. Have you recently found a recipe for a delicious, diabetes-inducing fudge pie? Well, the recipe's in imperial, so you'll have to convert the whole thing and even then the measurements will be slightly whacked so it probably won't be the exact, wondrous fudge pie you dreamed of making. If those stubborn Americans would just let go of the past and embrace the beauty of metric, we'd all be eating pie and getting heart disease right now.
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