How Scientifically Literate Are You?

Oh all right, I got two wrong. I did think it was probably Nitrogen but I said Carbon Dioxide, and I put Infrared when I should have said Ultraviolet. I don't get out much these days and being over 70 maybe I have the excuse of an ossified brain. I'm sure you all can think of more interesting explanations.

I'm sure I'd have gotten all of them when I was twelve too. Maybe not fracking though.

Yup, held my nose. Test taking is an art.I still flubbed two I should have got right. "UV protection" is written all over sunglasses and sun block creams for instance, as someone on the thread points out, how could I miss that? Well, as I said, I don't get out much any more. Sunlight? What's sunlight?As for Nitrogen, now I KNOW that Nitrogen is the main ingredient in air, I KNOW that. So how explain missing that one? I was thinking something like: Plants breathe in Carbon Dioxide and breathe out Oxygen, so CO2 must be the biggest player.Or, Air? What's air?

Yes, it was a joke, but at least now I know that argon is a constituent of air as well, if anyone ever asks.

I learned "nano" about fifteen years ago, and "fracking" probably more recently than that. Not words I'd have learned in high school. But they probably are learned there now.

There is no way I'm going to convert all the measurements in my cookbooks to metric and throw out all my measuring gear.

And my ruler and yardstick and measuring tape and scales. Darn tootin, I like America being unique too.

Oh yeh, we got the metric on everything too. As long as I don't need it I don't use it.

That too.

Na, metricity isn't all that superior. I'm not bragging about inferiority, if science needs metrics then use metrics for science, but leave the rest of us alone, we're doing fine without it. Scientists can learn to do the conversions, don't impose it on the rest of us. Good brain exercise too. And the fact that we have mixtures of both, as UK people have said they do, shows it isn't necessary to impose it on us anyway.

You explain it well enough to make me wish I'd learned it. Too late now. 'I don't have to be concerned with how they measure things in Germany of course. If I moved there I assume I'd learn their system. But my cookbooks correspond to my measuring tools and habits and that's all I need to know.But I also agree with this point: Yes, I'm good at estimating based on the system we have, and changing would be a huge problem for that reason. I can estimate inches and feet but forget centimeters. I know what a quart is but a liter is just an annoying failure to be a quart. Etc.\ Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well, we used to be ahead until the Left had at us, now we're on the way to Third World status.Not that that has anything to do with the metric system of course. Except that we were the most prosperous and inventive and benevolent society on the planet without it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You've made your point about the superiority of metric, only I'm not going to change because of my ingrained habits. That's just the way it is. I understand the old system, I can think in the old system, I can do quite decent estimates of length and size and distance and volume and quantity in the old system, and at my age there is no point in changing. I was thinking of the situation where the average person was going to be required to do conversions between the two systems and that's too much to ask of us, so if anybody is going to have to do that let it be the scientists. And I assumed they would have to because they would be living in two worlds themselves, their scientific world and the everyday world of old system measurements.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Golly gee, I thought I was correcting a misimpression. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes, doing all those conversions as you describe for your high school friend's mother is what I thought was necessary.