heh. I work in mils, uinches, microns and ounces (as a unit of thickness for plated metal and foils).
As a quality engineer and Apps Eng/technologist I act as a translator/linguist go-between for internal engineering customers and our suppliers. That makes it fun because:
a) My internal customers speak either mils or microns.
b) My suppliers speak mils and ounces if they're North American
or microns if they're Asian.
Of course, my first (heart) measurement language is English units so I still naturally think/visualize mils. Ergo, my internal translator always passes through the English units for conversion and visualization.
I use analogies with internal customers daily to relate numbers to a physical item for reference. I keep an old mic on my desktop to use for object lessons.
Relating back to a physical reference item is almost always needed even with highly educated (but Metric-centric) engineers. They just can't visualize the scale we're talking about in mm and can't relate it to the reality of the challenge in the fab.
e.g. Q: how big is a 100um laser ablated hole?
A: About 4 mils.
Q: What's that "look like" for scale?
A: Well, a human hair is a ~ 5 mil diameter and 25 mils is one turn of a mic...
bingo, customer gets the visualization and groks the fab problem/solution being discussed.
"The Guncounter: More fun than a barrel of tattooed knife-fighting chain-smoking monkey butlers with drinking problems and excessive gambling debts!"
"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic;" Justice Story
