John Rebstock, age 9, of Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, for his question:

Will the metric system replace the yard?

Someday we shall change our clumsy old way of measuring lengths to the neat and easy metric system. On that glorious day, sensible people will haul up their flags and shout for joy. It will mean the end of all the wearisome work of figuring twelve inches to the foot and 36 inches to the yard    plus a whole lot of other useless brain work. For the metric system is not a mad mixture of tens and twelves and thirty¬sixes. It is all based on tens. And nothing in this world is easier to figure than tens and tens of tens.

When the great change comes, the yard will be replaced by the neat meter. The meter happens to be a trifle more than three and a third inches longer than our yard, so all our yardsticks will have to be stretched a bit. Instead of 36 inches, the meter has 100 centimeters. It also has smaller and smaller sections and every one of them can be managed by multiplying and dividing by easy to manage tens.