To our science authors at JHS and SHS levels

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• francis kwarteng 11 years ago

  Dear Brother Idris,
  
  How are you?
  
  Thanks for all the effort you put in for your creative and informative work.
  
  You are still teaching those of us who still have a lot to learn about the natural world.
  
  Indeed, you ...
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  Dear Brother Idris,
  
  How are you?
  
  Thanks for all the effort you put in for your creative and informative work.
  
  You are still teaching those of us who still have a lot to learn about the natural world.
  
  Indeed, you are filling up my huge knowledge gaps with profound information via your superbly penned write-ups. This is another excellent piece of work.
  
  Keep it up!
  
  I am truly grateful to you for your free gifts.
  
  Thank you.

  reply
• goza gotoro 11 years ago

  Thank you very much Idris Pacas. This is the type of articles Ghana needs from true brains like you.I doff my hat for you.

  Thank you very much Idris Pacas. This is the type of articles Ghana needs from true brains like you.I doff my hat for you.

  reply
• Kofi 11 years ago

  Who told this guy MB and KB are wrong? And telling people Mb and Kb must be accepted.
  
  If anyone is interested to check units of measurement and how to write them, they will google as well. Every day you just google and cop ...
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  Who told this guy MB and KB are wrong? And telling people Mb and Kb must be accepted.
  
  If anyone is interested to check units of measurement and how to write them, they will google as well. Every day you just google and copying and pasting on Ghanaweb. If anyone ever wants to educate themselves, they will google and learn as there is more authentic info on the web than what you copy and paste here. We want people to come out with ways to reduce poverty in Africa not such a slave capital and small letters which the whites themselves ignore and consider trivial.

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• GOE 11 years ago

  Then don't read again. After all, most of the things you read are also copied from somewhere and brought to the new place for you to read.
  
  If the 'authentics' are online which anybody can access, why are there still mistak ...
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  Then don't read again. After all, most of the things you read are also copied from somewhere and brought to the new place for you to read.
  
  If the 'authentics' are online which anybody can access, why are there still mistakes as the write nicely pointed out? It's not everybody who can search for info online.
  
  Thus, the author has done a nice job. Consider how odd you comment is among the lot.
  
  Keep thinking. The same Kb is written in Oxford English Dictionary (7th Ed).

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• Kofi 11 years ago

  We must face reality on the ground and stop these given crocodile appreciations and compliments to any triviality. English language itself is *dynamic,as time goes on it contents change. The whites themselves are not bothered ...
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  We must face reality on the ground and stop these given crocodile appreciations and compliments to any triviality. English language itself is *dynamic,as time goes on it contents change. The whites themselves are not bothered as to how they write these units provided what they write is understood by a receiver of the message without any ambiguity.

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• GOE 11 years ago

  The writer targets authors and teachers. Understanding by the teacher or the examiner is not what gives the students the marks. Instead, it is what the student writes on the paper.
  
  Thus, when a question reads like this:
  
  ...
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  The writer targets authors and teachers. Understanding by the teacher or the examiner is not what gives the students the marks. Instead, it is what the student writes on the paper.
  
  Thus, when a question reads like this:
  
  What is the symbol for the unit of length? The only correct answer is 'm' and not 'M'.
  
  Again, one thousandth of a metre is mm and not Mm or mM.
  
  Accordingly, hold your peace if you're not in the classroom. Forget about 'whites'. When you're taking BECE or WASSCE, not white marks the scripts.

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• Kofi 11 years ago

  This guy is polluting Authors and teachers' mind just because he also wants to write. This is the first thing you must hav in mind. For example, take any English dictionary and open at MB and KB, and tell me if they are wrong ...
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  This guy is polluting Authors and teachers' mind just because he also wants to write. This is the first thing you must hav in mind. For example, take any English dictionary and open at MB and KB, and tell me if they are wrong to be written as units. Another thing you must bear in mind, we can't forget about the whites and how they want their children as students to writea s we do copy the language from them. A white teacher teaches a white student to accept both MB and Mb as correct form of megabyte. You who English is your third language, you just wake up one morning with boggle mind, you google on the internet to copy a rubbish and paste on Ghanaweb for public consumption. This guy is just wasting our tax money from the government as a salary and allowance.

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• GOE 11 years ago

  Thus far, all the others who commented praised the write-up.
  
  Writing in English is different from writing in science or technical writing in general. Notice that many science words are not found in the dictionary, eg, hil ...
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  Thus far, all the others who commented praised the write-up.
  
  Writing in English is different from writing in science or technical writing in general. Notice that many science words are not found in the dictionary, eg, hilum, the scar on the seed. Thus, seeing a word or an expression in the dictionary or not seeing it there has nothing to do with its correctness in technical sense.
  
  Keep bringing in your opinions.

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• Kofi 11 years ago

  Stop this crocodile praise for any write-up and be real. Try to grab a good dictionary. Not any dictionary is a dictionary. Some dictionaries spell out so-called technical/scientific words in their proper contexts.

  Stop this crocodile praise for any write-up and be real. Try to grab a good dictionary. Not any dictionary is a dictionary. Some dictionaries spell out so-called technical/scientific words in their proper contexts.

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• IDRIS PACAS 11 years ago

  It's not completely wrong to write KB, MB and GB, but Kb, Mb and Gb promote consistency in technical sense.
  
  If you like writing MB etc, continue. Let those who see reasoning in Kb and Mb too continue.
  
  You said that some ...
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  It's not completely wrong to write KB, MB and GB, but Kb, Mb and Gb promote consistency in technical sense.
  
  If you like writing MB etc, continue. Let those who see reasoning in Kb and Mb too continue.
  
  You said that some dictionaries and not good dictionaries. How will pupils/students know if teachers fail to draw their attention to such issues?
  
  Good afternoon. It's nice having you here.
  
  God bless you!

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• francis kwarteng 11 years ago

  Dear Brother Idris,
  
  Continue the good work.
  
  Even most dissertations (99.99%) (bachelor's, master's, and doctorate) are not original.
  
  They are mostly based on previous work done by others. It is why dissertations, l ...
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  Dear Brother Idris,
  
  Continue the good work.
  
  Even most dissertations (99.99%) (bachelor's, master's, and doctorate) are not original.
  
  They are mostly based on previous work done by others. It is why dissertations, like most schlarly nn-fiction works, have bibliographies, references, etc.
  
  Our greatest writers including Shakespeare, Molefi Kete Asante, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, George Bernard Shaw, Toni Morrison, Jane Austen, etc., have all relied on previous work by others to advance their own.
  
  For instance, Shakespeare's "The Tempest" drew heavily upon previous work by others: Ovid's "Metamorphosis," Erasmus' "Naufragium," Gonzalo's "Of the Canibales," Peter Martyr's "De Orbe Novo," etc.
  
  His "Othello" also drew heavily upon Italian Cinthio's 1565 work "Hecatommithi" and Leo Africanus' "A Geographical History of Africa." Interestingly, there are many examples such as these from all over the world as well as across history and time.
  
  What I am saying in effect is that I have not seen one single original article published on Ghanaweb. Therefore, I see no reason for a reader to claim you copy ideas from elsewhere.
  
  It is also possible there are some readers who may be seeing the arguments you are advancing here for the first. These same readers may know a lot about this natural world which the writer he or she reads may not know.
  
  That is why I don't underestimate the intellectual capacity of any human being. Molefi Kete Asante, Carole Jorce Oates, Isaac Asimov, Shakespeare, Noam Chomsky, and Cheikh Anta Diop did not know it all!
  
  In my particular case, Idris Pacas, the more I read and the more I interact with some of the greatest minds on the planet, the more I realize how ignorant I am. This is why I approach writers (and individauls) with a "tabula rasa" mindset and humility.
  
  This is one of the important ways an individual truly learns (Paulo Freire thoroughly discusses this concept in his influential scholarly work "Pedagogy of the Oppressed." The theories he advances in this book is the basis of "critical pedagogy," a concept used all over tthe world).
  
  Having said all that, I have had the same problem with some readers of my Ghanaweb articles. It is equally sad and unfortunate for some readers to try to blame me for not supporting some of my ideas with references when those articles in questions have tons of verifiable references and facts.
  
  I sometimes have had to come back to the comment section, get into the articles under attack, copy the references alreay provided, and paste them for those nagging readers.
  
  You do a good job to cite your references. I have seen many Ghanaweb columnists who present facts without attribution, a bad journalistic behavior. I abhor plagiarism. This brings to mind the sensational "The 2012 Harvard Cheating Scandal."
  
  These Ghanaweb columnists in question want to appear "intelligent." However, I do not blame them because Ghanaweb is not a scholarly journal. It is merely a forum where any junk is posted without without censureship or editorial oversight.
  
  Idris Pacas, writers who write for popular American journalistic websites, like Ghanaweb, Modernghana, Spyghana, where I occasionally visit, do provide verifiable references. I can understand we are still not used to that attribution culture yet!
  
  Maintain the focus. And continue to give your readers the best of you. Keep up the good work.
  
  I do really enjoy your writings because they give me a lot to think about.
  
  Thanks.

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• IDRIS PACAS 11 years ago

  Thank you.

  Thank you.

  reply
• francis kwarteng 11 years ago

  Dear Brother Idris and General Readers,
  
  I wish to bring this important piece to you and your readers' attention. I believe I read it somewhere in the late 1990s, and followed the debate well into the 2000s.
  
  Certainly r ...
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  Dear Brother Idris and General Readers,
  
  I wish to bring this important piece to you and your readers' attention. I believe I read it somewhere in the late 1990s, and followed the debate well into the 2000s.
  
  Certainly readers will appreciate the work you are doing after reading this piece. I hope those who think your essay is not that important should look a close at the importance of statistical quality control (and its relationship with project management and cost-benefit analysis) in industrial economies.
  
  Metrology (the science of measurement) is is such a hot issue in engineering, science, pharmacology (like compounding, dosage, etc), phlebotomy, drug discovery research, etc.
  
  There are more costly examples around the world. Let this suffice. We may discuss them some other time. Finally, those who have no clue will rubbish your arguments. I am not here referring to any reader in particular.
  
  
  Title: METRIC MISHAP CAUSED LOSS OF NASA ORBITER
  
  NASA's CLIMATE ORBITER WAS LOST September 23, 1999
  
  September 30, 1999
  Web posted at: 4:21 p.m. EDT (2021 GMT)
  In this story:
  
  Metric system used by NASA for many years
  
  Error points to nation's conversion lag
  
  RELATED STORIES, SITES icon
  
  By Robin Lloyd
  CNN Interactive Senior Writer
  
  .....................................
  (CNN) -- NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agency's team used the more conventional metric system for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday.
  
  The units mismatch prevented navigation information from transferring between the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft team in at Lockheed Martin in Denver and the flight team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
  
  Lockheed Martin helped build, develop and operate the spacecraft for NASA. Its engineers provided navigation commands for Climate Orbiter's thrusters in English units although NASA has been using the metric system predominantly since at least 1990.
  
  No one is pointing fingers at Lockheed Martin, said Tom Gavin, the JPL administrator to whom all project managers report.
  
  "This is an end-to-end process problem," he said. "A single error like this should not have caused the loss of Climate Orbiter. Something went wrong in our system processes in checks and balances that we have that should have caught this and fixed it."
  
  The finding came from an internal review panel at JPL that reported the cause to Gavin on Wednesday. The group included about 10 navigation specialists, many of whom recently retired from JPL.
  
  "They have been looking at this since Friday morning following the loss," Gavin said.
  
  The navigation mishap killed the mission on a day when engineers had expected to celebrate the craft's entry into Mars' orbit.
  
  After a 286-day journey, the probe fired its engine on September 23 to push itself into orbit.
  
  The engine fired but the spacecraft came within 60 km (36 miles) of the planet -- about 100 km closer than planned and about 25 km (15 miles) beneath the level at which the it could function properly, mission members said.
  
  The latest findings show that the spacecraft's propulsion system overheated and was disabled as Climate Orbiter dipped deeply into the atmosphere, JPL spokesman Frank O'Donnell said.
  
  That probably stopped the engine from completing its burn, so Climate Orbiter likely plowed through the atmosphere, continued out beyond Mars and now could be orbiting the sun, he said.
  
  Climate Orbiter was to relay data from an upcoming partner mission called Mars Polar Lander, scheduled to set down on Mars in December. Now mission planners are working out how to relay its data via its own radio and another orbiter now circling the red planet.
  
  Climate Orbiter and Polar Lander were designed to help scientists understand Mars' water history and the potential for life in the planet's past. There is strong evidence that Mars was once awash with water, but scientists have no clear answers to where the water went and what drove it away.
  
  NASA has convened two panels to look into what led to the loss of the orbiter, including the internal peer review panel that released the Thursday finding. NASA also plans to form a third board -- an independent review panel -- to look into the accident.
  
  Metric system used by NASA for many years
  
  A NASA document came out several years ago, when the Cassini mission to Saturn was under development, establishing the metric system for all units of measurement, Gavin said.
  
  The metric system is used for the Polar Lander mission, as well as upcoming missions to Mars, he said.
  
  That review panel's findings now are being studied by a second group -- a special review board headed up by John Casani, which will search for the processes that failed to find the metric to English mismatch. Casani retired from JPL two months ago from the position of chief engineer for the Lab.
  
  "We're going to look at how was the data transferred," Gavin said. "How did it originally get into system in English units? How was it transferred? When we were doing navigation and Doppler (distance and speed) checks, how come we didn't find it?"
  
  "People make errors," Gavin said. "The problem here was not the error. It was the failure of us to look at it end-to-end and find it. It's unfair to rely on any one person."
  MarsDestination Mars
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  Lockheed Martin, which failed to immediately return a telephone call for comment, is building orbiters and landers for future Mars missions, including one set to launch in 2001 and a mission that will return some Mars rocks to Earth a few years down the line.
  
  It also has helped with the Polar Lander mission, set to land on Mars on December 3 and conduct a 90-day mission studying martian weather. It also is designed to extend a robotic arm that will dig into the nearby martian soil and search for signs of water.
  
  NASA managers have said the Polar Lander mission will go on as planned and return answers to the same scientific questions originally planned -- even though the lander will have to relay its data to Earth without help from Climate Orbiter.
  
  Error points to nation's conversion lag
  
  Lorelle Young, president of the U.S. Metric Association, said the loss of Climate Orbiter brings up the "untenable" position of the United States in relation to most other countries, which rely on the metric system for measurement. She was not surprised at the error that arose.
  
  "In this day and age when the metric system is the measurement language of all sophisticated science, two measurements systems should not be used," Young said.
  
  "Only the metric system should be used because that is the system science uses," she said.
  
  She put blame at the feet of Congress that she said has squeezed NASA's budget to the point that it has no funds to completely convert its operations to metric.
  
  "This should be a loud wake-up call to Congress that being first in technology requires funding," she said, "and it's a very important area for the country."
  
  .....................................
  
  RELATED STORIES:
  
  NASA's metric confusion caused Mars orbiter loss
  September 30, 1999
  
  Three panels to investigate Mars orbiter loss
  September 28, 1999
  
  NASA gives up search for missing Mars orbiter
  September 24, 1999
  
  Mars craft possibly dead
  September 23, 1999
  
  Australia fossil to help in search for life on Mars
  September 3, 1999
  
  NASA reveals site for next Mars touchdown
  August 25, 1999
  
  Researchers: Mars once hummed with magnetism, like Earth
  April 29, 1999
  
  NASA finds more evidence of possible past life on Mars
  March 19, 1999
  
  Probe heads for Mars with shovel, microphone
  January 4, 1999
  
  RELATED SITES:
  
  Mars Climate Orbiter
  Mars Global Surveyor
  Mars Meteorite Home Page (JPL)
  Macquarie University
  Stromatolites
  Fossil Record of the Cyanobacteria
  
  Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
  
  External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.

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• Kofi 11 years ago

  Either you write "M" or "m" or any is accepted by whites. He is not a good teacher just wasting the country's money for salary as a teacher.

  Either you write "M" or "m" or any is accepted by whites. He is not a good teacher just wasting the country's money for salary as a teacher.

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• syncopa 11 years ago

  Just imagine, if more Ghanaians wrote about getting things 'write' (sic) ...

  Just imagine, if more Ghanaians wrote about getting things 'write' (sic) ...

  reply
• J Ananga 11 years ago

  Interesting article. It is not only in the sciences that these avoidable errors occur. They occur in a number of english and maths books at both the primary and JHS levels. How do you say Mole National Park is in the Upper Ea ...
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  Interesting article. It is not only in the sciences that these avoidable errors occur. They occur in a number of english and maths books at both the primary and JHS levels. How do you say Mole National Park is in the Upper East Region? How do say Adamu is a boy in Bolgatanga in the Upper West Region? Every one knows there is no forest in Bolgatanga yet an author would write that Adamu from Bolga picks his gun and goes to the forest and shoots an antelope. Books are not censured or reviewed before being pushed to schools and forced on pupils to buy. MoE and GES must sit up and make sure only books of quality are allowed in our schools.

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