Are Units important?
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Are Units important?
"The 'root cause' of the loss of the spacecraft was the
failed translation of English units into metric units in a
segment of ground-based, navigation-related mission
software, as NASA has previously announced," said
Arthur Stephenson, chairman of the Mars Climate Orbiter
Mission Failure Investigation Board. "The failure review
board has identified other significant factors that allowed
this error to be born, and then let it linger and propagate
to the point where it resulted in a major error in our
understanding of the spacecraft's path as it approached
Mars."
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/orbiter/
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 Steps:
1. Identify starting & ending units.
2. Line up conversion factors so units
cancel.
3. Multiply all top numbers & divide by
each bottom number.
4. Check units & answer.
Example: Convert the Following
(1) 32 ft. = ___ yd.
(2) 60 in. = ___ ft.
Example: Convert the Following
(1) 72 oz. = ___ C
(2) 4 qt. = ___ gal.
Example: Convert the Following
(1) 12 lbs. = ___ oz.
(2) 192 oz. = ___ lb.
Example: Convert the Following
(1) 500 cm. = ___ m
(2) 8,000 g = ___ kg.