[doc30]

It's always good to know both systems. Standard units for common, everyday things and metric for a lot of technical things. Being from Canada, I was fortunate enough to have learned both systems in elementary school. Now, it's all metric there. Co-workers who come from Europe though only backwoods red-necks would be the only ones not to use metric. They are shocked that Standard units are used by everyone in day to day living and they need to learn that system, too.

That being said, even in the sciences, there are different units used in different disciplines. Metric, acually known as SI units (Systeme Internationale - yes, the metric system was officially named by the French) can be broken into the 'kilogram-meter-seconds' and the 'gram-centimeter-second' subdivisions, plus all the esoteric units derived from those two systems!

[-YYZ-]

You're right, actually, I'm lucky to have a background in both systems. And when I studied engineering we were force to work problems in both system, sometimes even with mixed units.

The MKS system does result in some rather useless units - like the Pascal, for example. One Pascal is a ridiculously small unit of pressure, so that you end up having to use kiloPascals for just about everything in the real world. Of course you could say the same thing about the kilogram, which is so commonly used that it is considered a unit in its own right.