How the metric system is creeping into our lives: Part 1

You often hear about "the global economy" but another thing that's becoming global is "culture". With modern communications, people all over the world can be exposed to ideas and items from other parts of the world. I started noticing about 6 months ago that I'm reading a lot of things on the internet that were created outside the U.S. Since the U.S. is one of only 3 countries that doesn't use the metric system (Crazy!), units on websites are often in metric.  More about how I think the internet is going to influence the use/understanding of the metric system in the United States coming later so stay tuned!

I came across this collection idea while looking at craft sites on the web. Issue 1 of Less Than 100g - Bottle cap collection: Create a collection of things that each weigh less than 100 g.

• What would you collect? 
• What weighs less than 100 g that you could include?

I'm going to post examples of collections of science-related goodies that I have that meet the less than 100 g limit. I checked them all with a kitchen scale that I keep at home.

First off, my wind-up toy collection:



I love these little toys. Each winds up and does something different. I'll try to put together a video to show them off. You might be wondering what this has to do with science. Well, a number of years ago, NASA had a program running on the space shuttles called Science of Toys where astronauts would test the behavior of  toys like these on the shuttle and compare that to what we see on Earth.  Check out these NASA websites for more information about the really neat Science of Toys program.
Toys in Space Investigation   
 http://quest.nasa.gov/space/teachers/liftoff/toys.html
http://shuttleexperience.nasa.gov/KidsCorner/ToysinSpace.pdf