Joanne Smithies Our Lady & St. Gerards RCP

Are Units important?

3

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/ 4

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.