How many pounds make one metric ton?

When Mike suggested that the world switch to a consistent setting on the clock, I began to think about the plausibility of this concept. I only came up with two problems with it. First, Santa couldn't utilize time zones to help deliver gifts all over the world in one night. However, he could add a few deer to his sleigh and things would work out fine. Second, if the world operated on the same time, some people would see the sun rise at 10:00 p.m.. This would take an adjustment, but it is really the same adjustment made as a result of DST. It may take a some time to get used to going to your '9 to 5' at midnight, but I'm sure the world can handle it. The only real problem with having the sun rise at 10:00 p.m. is that things like sundials would not work as they do now. But I think that if you're relying on a sundial to tell the time you don't have to pick the kids up from soccer practice in an hour and, as a result, probably don't really need to know what time it is anyway.

Thinking about the possibility of 'world time' got me to think about other inconsistencies in measurement in the world and the benefits of having a world standard set of measurements. Actually, this is almost the case. A few decades ago pretty much everyone in the world adopted the SI as standard. Some of you may not know what SI means. That is because the United States of America uses English units. SI is a French acronym, but translated in English it means International System (of Units). While you may not have known what SI was, I'm sure you knew some of its units of measurement. The seven basic units of measurement in SI are the second, meter, kilogram, ampere, Kelvin, mole, and candela. Since I am in a scientific major in college, these units play a big part in my areas of study. Unfortunately, English units are much more difficult to use. While SI makes use of the metric system (1000 millimeters in one meter, for example), English units are not as easily converted and often require multiple factors of conversion in a given problem.

This rarely poses a problem for people who are not as controlled by numbers as I am. However, since conversions are rarely needed in an everyday life, I believe that it would not take much for the United States to make the switch to SI. A simple government decree forcing manufacturers to print ingredients and contents in SI would cause the consumer to learn the system pretty quickly. A single system of units would make my life a lot easier and would probably make life in the United States a little easier too, once Americans got past their apprehensions and stubbornness of switching.

The question posed in the title is a simple example of unit inconsistency. Pound is an English measurement, but it can be used to measure a mass or a force (force is mass multiplied by length divided by time twice). This double meaning can cause problems. In the title question the unit could be mass or force and depends on what you want to measure. Metric ton is a measurement in SI and is different from the ton used in the United States. This is one unit that can cause inconsistency in measurement. One example of failure due to unit inconsistency was the Mars Climate Orbiter which burned up in the Martian atmosphere because project teams used both English and SI forces in their calculations and did not convert them to a single system.

In case you were wondering, there are 2204.623 pounds in one metric ton. Oddly enough, this is the same value whether it is a mass measurement or a weight measurement.