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#Post#: 95--------------------------------------------------
Unit Conversion
DIR By: StoryGod
Date: December 31, 2019, 12:04 pm
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Albina closed the small group study room door, in the
Cerni-Al-Sigh penthouse and stared down eight sullen faces.
School started tomorrow. These were there last hours, no not
hours, moments of freedom. Too bad. Albina's job was to see
among other things that homework got done, and more than half
the kids were having problems with unit conversion. Now she was
going to teach it the right way.
She pulled up a white board. "You have to know how to convert
units to survive on this planet. Can anybody tell me why?" Yes,
that sounded like a rhetorical question but it wasn't. The class
was silent.
"OK, ladies, how many of you have helped your mothers or fathers
cook?"
Four hands shot up."How many of you have helped bake a cake."
The hands stayed up. "OK, let's say the recipe calls for a cup
of sugar and you have to go buy some sugar. Now you go to the
store to buy some sugar and do they sell it by the cup?"
"They sell it by the box or bag," answered Suri.
"And how big is the bag."
"They come in different sizes."
"Can you give me one of those sizes."
"Five pounds," Jupita replied with confidence.
"How many cups are in five pounds?"
Silence...OK. "How many ounces are in a cup?" This was a trick
question.
"Eight," Jupita fell right into the trap.
"Could somebody look it up for me. Sugar may be heavier or
lighter than water."
There was a flurry of dug-out phones and then "7.11 ounces,"
announced Corianne.
"Let's round it to seven ounces."
"Now how many ounces are there in a five pound bag of sugar. How
many ounces are there in five pounds."
There was silence. "This is where we need unit conversion,"
Albina came in for the kill. "How many ounces are there in one
pound?"
"Sixteen," Jupita vindicated herself.
"So how many ounces are there in five pounds?" Albina asked.
"And if you can't answer off the top of your head, how do you
calculate it."
"It's five times sixteen," answered Rupinder.
"Would you like to calculate it for me?"
Rupinder came down to the board and got the answer correct. "So
we have eighty ounces of sugar."
"We have more than enough to bake the cake!" Corianne answered.
"But how many cups of sugar did we buy. We are curious because
we don't use ounces in most recipes. How many ounces in a cup of
sugar?"
"Seven," Jupita replied.
"How do we figure out how many cups are in that sixty ounce bag
of sugar?" asked Albina.
"It won't work!" cried Nelia
"Why not?"
"You can't divide seven into sixty."
"You can if you leave a remainder or don't mind using a
fraction. Someone want to do it on the board." Tikvah
volunteered and the answer was eight cups with four ounces or
half a cup approximately left over. The girls had just done a
unit conversion as a class.
They did several more of them and then Albina could hear other
Suite Advisors rounding up their charges. The evening was over.
As it said in the world famous, Landon-Burchard-Durren dining
hall "Have a Happy Week!"
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