Starship Asterisk*

It's like an American traveling abroad who complains "what's wrong with these people, why don't they speak my language?" I would never say that. Exaggeration doesn't help here. I'm writing here for discussion purposes, not to be insulted. Millions (you've already been corrected on this) o...

We are taught the metric system in school. I went to a podunk public school in a podunk city and even I learned about SI units and the metric system in various science classes. You were taught the metric system. The US does use the metric system, in science and in other endeavors (soda bottling, as...

the speed of light is 186 282.397 miles per second. One mile is 1.609 kilometers, so... oh, bother! The speed of light is almost 300,000 kilometers per second! If you were born in the US, try doing this in your head . . . 367,293,229 k = ? miles. 10 seconds later into the documentary, 253 liters = ...

I'm sure that this topic has popped up on other occasions. I can't be the only person who has to go to a kilo to mi converter each time I read the explanation under the pictures posted at APOD, NASA, etc. It's apparent that scientists and others dealing in science love to use the metric system for d...