LETTERS - "The American Engineering System of Units and It's

LETTERS - "The American Engineering System of Units and It's Dimensional Constant g". L. Glasser, J. E. Cook. Ind. Eng. Chem. , 1969, 61 (10), pp 7–...
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LETTERS Industrial Chemists & Chemical Engineers

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Let’s Change Now

Compromise

Sir; As a graduated chemical engineer who saw the light and rapidly changed to physical chemistry, may I take up your invitation and comment on Professor Klinkenberg’s article [IND. ENG. CHEM.,61, (4), 5 3 (1969)], “The American Engineering System of Units and Its Dimensional Constant g.” T h e whole force of his analysis, lengthy and involved as it necessarily is, culminates in the remark that “brilliant chemical engineers sometimes have a weak moment regarding units”-imagine how the less brilliant suffer ! T h e engineering “system” of units is indeed a sorry mess, inviting error, and it is time that engineers took their courage in both hands, threw out their present concoctions, and made a fresh start with the International System (SI). Whatever SI’S present difficulties, with units of sometimes inconvenient and often unfamiliar size, it is not plagued with the irremediable defect of one name for two easily confused entities. Furthermore, the international scientific acceptance of SI and the corresponding legal adoption of the metric system in a n everincreasing circle of countries make certain that engineers will eventually take the enlightened view. For the sake of yourselves and your longsuffering profession I ask, why not now? L. Glasser Rhodes University Grahamstown, South Africa

Sir; Klinkenberg has done the profession a service. Having been educated in England on a strange combination of the “poundal-poundfoot-second” system and the horrors of various American chemical engineering textbooks, I’ve been through it all. Through experience, training, and possibly prejudice, I have come to believe that the optimal way through the jungle is to carry out all one’s thinking, equation juggling, and figuring in the absolute (poundalpound-foot-second) system, converting the results into “conventional” (i.e., familiar) units after everything else is done. J. E. Cook Mobil Chemical Co. New Yurk, N . Y.10017

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