Counting the seconds until Metric Week (Oct. 9–15, 2011) begins? That’s the spirit! Seconds are the metric unit of time. You also could figure your distance in meters (the metric unit of length) from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) labs in Gaithersburg, Maryland, where it’s metric all year round.

This year marks the 35th annual celebration of Metric Week, started by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics on May 10, 1976, approximately one year after the Metric Conversion Act of 1975. Now held the tenth day of the tenth month, Metric Week serves as an opportunity for teachers, students, and the public to learn about the metric system, also known as the international system of units, or SI for short.

The U.S. government has adopted SI, long the standard measurement system of science and engineering, as the preferred system of weights and measures for commerce and industry. Based on units of 10, SI is very easy to learn, and many Americans know it better than they think. Many products, from bottled drinks to medicines to the nutritional values posted on cereal boxes many people read every morning, already are sold and conversed about in terms of their metric measures.

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