Yes, it’s from a book called “Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader” and that book was resting on a closed toilet seat in a nation that only kind of uses the metric system in certain situations… however, you’d be surprised how much you can learn after a single visit to any local fast-food joint!
The paragraph on the meter should mention that their measuring error from the pole to the equator was .02%, which, without using satellites or even electricity, is fucking impressive.
That is impressive & a nice amendment on your part. Thank you for the added detail
.0002 × 10,000,000 = 2,000 metersSo they were off by 2 kilometers? Not bad, honestly…
I reckon if took every turd I’d ever caused and laid them (both senses) end-to-end it would be more than 2km, for context.
So how the hell was it done? Long piece of rope? Hot air balloon? Or having a bird fly from one point to another and timing it?
Calculations. In 240 BCE, Eratosthenes used a stick. He basically found a place where the sun was directly overhead, and measured the shadow from a stick a known distance to the north of that location. He approximated the circumference of the earth to be 25,000 miles, which was off by 99 miles.
I don’t think he used miles.
‘Kid Named Miles’
There’s a part in one of these Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers that has a paragraph about the dude with the shadow stick.
How do we know the conversion of whatever length unit he was using, in modern units?
Uhh, educated guesses. The stadion wasn’t exactly standardized. Most of the conversions I see put 10 stadia at 1 mile so that’s what I went with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadion_(unit)
The main thing is his methodology was precise.
Lots of triangulation and extrapolation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_measurement_of_Delambre_and_Méchain
It’s so impressively thought out. I got my mind blown when the physics teacher told us that 1 calorie is the amount of energy it takes to heat 1cc by 1°C. Suddenly you realise that someone actually put some effort into this whole system
The one that blew my mind the most was finding out that calories are calculated by setting the food on fire, and then measuring how much it can heat water. Calories are literally just a measurement of how well something burns.
It’s incredibly funny to me that the two metric units that the US actually commonly uses (calories and Watt-hours), aren’t SI units. Those are both measured with Joules.
And iirc 1 Joule is the energy required to lift 100g by 1m
No. It is pushing by 1 metre with a force of 1 newton.
No. It is Newton pushing 1 litre of jewels.
No. It is J. Lo pushing a newt on 1 litre of water.
No. It is Jules Verne pushing a carton of fig newtons a distance of 1 litre.
I think this snippet misrepresents the accuracy of the former definition of the metre. Sure, it’s no longer the distance from the equator to the pole (the modern definition uses the speed of light and the period of transition for a particular atom), but the difference is quite small. The circumference of the Earth around the poles (so 4 times the distance from equator to pole) is 40007.863 km. In Napoleonic times scientists had a pretty good idea what the shape of the Earth was.
Earth squeezes and stretches and wobbles & rotates. Time as we know it changes in length because it is the common nature of “time” to become chaos which then becomes order. Hylomorphism or Impermanence is to Entropy as measurement is to the fundamentals of size. Who is to say that the distance between two points should be constrained to the barriers of human existence & understanding. All we have is pictures & words, maybe a few trinkets that will become dust that becomes something else that attempts to quantify reality.
Earth squeezes and stretches and wobbles & rotates.
Sort of, yeah, Earth is a bit wider around the equatorial axis than around the polar one.
Time as we know it changes in length because it is the common nature of “time” to become chaos which then becomes order. Hylomorphism or Impermanence is to Entropy as measurement is to the fundamentals of size. Who is to say that the distance between two points should be constrained to the barriers of human existence & understanding. All we have is pictures & words, maybe a few trinkets that will become dust that becomes something else that attempts to quantify reality.
This reads like an unfortunate confluence of psychosis, psychoactive substances and LLMs.
While I can’t speak for my chemical imbalances, I can certainly assure you I am %100 not a fucking algorithm or some lame ass excuse for manufactured digital intelligence…
Sort of, yeah, Earth is a bit wider around the equatorial axis than around the polar one.
Thanks for explaining that a fucking ball is easier to squeeze at it’s widest part, genius.
What are you talking about? That isn’t what they said, and a ball doesn’t have a widest point. That’s more or less the definition of a ball.
The distance between the two poles is smaller than the distance from one side to the other following the equator. The earth isn’t quite a ball, it’s a bit squashed because of way it spins
Okay, a ball is equally wide but sometimes it gets squeezed and becomes tallish
Since it seems like you’re confused about the precise deformation of earth: the earth is wider around the equator. It’s not being squished but, rather, being flung apart by its spinning on its axis, like spinning pizza dough. Gravity just keeps it the same shape.
If you’re interested, look up “geodesy”
To agree on a unified measurement system for things like engineering, science and commerce across nations and cultures is a question of practicability though, not pseudophilosophical ramblings.
I say we measure everything with how angry it makes the French.
Earth squeezes and stretches and wobbles & rotates.
Don’t we all, Earth, don’t we all…
Love me some uncle john’s! Those page numbers are iconic, though I could immediately tell it was UJBR from the asterisks and writing style. Is this from “plunges into history”?
Also, unlike the imperialist system it is not utter horseshite.
I use centimeters for certain things, but I call them “inches”.
Love me some Uncle John’s. I’d recognize that page number decorator anywhere!
Uncle John knows the correct way to mount toilet paper.
I have two bathrooms and do both.
The real question is; which do I use for my personal lou or WC or wash closet or bathroom or powder room or shitter?
If you don’t want to offend anyone, just leave the spool sitting upright on the lid
Or an apology note and a bucket full of water
Or three seashells
Someone so consistently responding to themselves is pretty entertaining.
My god, I commented almost this exact thing, word for word.
Looks at comment history
Oh wow, yeah you did! Great minds think alike, I guess!
And the fact that Inch is not precisly defined. “Three grains of …” or “King’s thumb” is not a precise definition.
One ten millionth of a quarter of the circumference of some random ass planet somewhere isn’t either.
Precise definition isn’t really practically necessary. It’s only useful if you need to independently recreate a system in isolation. It’s much easier to have a reference material and just copy it. You can even build a reference length if you have something with known measurements.
Nowadays, the inch is defined in metric units anyway.
Without metric inch is arbitrary unit, can be anything.
Uncle John’s bathroom reader!
I know this has nothing to do with the metric system, but I saw the toilet paper roll around the page number and got a surge of happy brain sauce due to the happy memories of all the copies I owned through the years: 2The other fun thing is with the new calendar, they literslly reset the count to year 1. The coins for the first few years literally said “l’an 7” or “l’an 11”.
“We decide when history starts” is a hell of a sentiment.
We still do it, we just celebrated new year 235
I’m still sad decimal time didn’t catch on.
It would have worked so well. 2 digit timestamp gives you 15 (old)minute accuracy which is just perfect for appointments and organizing your day. Digital minutes would be a bit longer than old minutes which is fine for bus/train times etc. Digital seconds a bit shorter than old seconds which is great for timing things. I always thought a second was a wee bit longer than it ought to be anyway.
“We decide when history starts” is a hell of a sentiment.
It’s only consequencial if you want to get rid of anything that was imposed by the church.
I like that sentiment if it starts with us having the knowledge to be better than before
Literally because it scaled
So we only know a kilogram of water weighs a kilogram because of an arbitrary decision by the French? How much does it really weigh?
It doesn’t even weigh a kilogram. It masses one kilogram. It’s weight will be something like 9.8 Newtons.
Ever since that dude translated the Rosetta stone they’ve been up their own asses.
In what context do people use metric units of length larger than a kilometer? 🤨
When measuring my dick.
Multiple kilometers for example.
Woah
Why this year I drove 1.5 Megameter by car
Technically you can say that, I just don’t remember ever hearing it in any context, not even space travel.
Megameter, gigameter, and terameter are occasionally used in astronomy and Earth science, though units like AU and light-year are usually preferred.
Here’s an example of megameter being used. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abd0312
Well, in Sweden we typically use miles (the matric variant, ie. 10km) to describe distance by car.
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Kilo just means 1,000, a kilo meter is just 1,000 meters. That last point is simply stupid conjecture by the author, and unlike the metric system, isn’t well thought out.
You could measure things in kilo miles if you want…
I mean yeah, Metric scales.
Everything can be scaled. 1 can be two halves & 3 can be 12 .025’s. or we can all just agree that everything is based on various systems of measurement invented by humans who can hardly agree on their own origins and the purpose of their existence, or even the right to exist.
I don’t think anyone can in good conscience say that inches scale to small measurements. Sure, you can use them, but subtracting 8/1000 out of something that is 1 5/8 and noting the final length is just unwieldy.
You don’t need to get super existential about it, imperial was invented before we invented 0 and the decimal system and it shows. Sure the difference in basic units is irrelevant, no one cares what the meter or inch is defined as, the “superior” one is just what you’re used to and have an intuition for. But having units that relate to each other in round ways and can be easilt rescaled to the precision/range required can be nothing but a benefit
Maybe you’ve never heard of decimal inches. Anything under 1/32" people start using ‘thou’ as in thousandths of an inch.
Subtracting fractions is something you can learn. Children can even do it.
Measurement works because it’s accepted on it’s own terms.
If I were to believe that 1 is 2, it would be very difficult to explain that 2 is indeed double the normal amount of 1.
The same goes for some alien species that has too many or not enough fingers and doesn’t use prime numbers because of this.
I don’t personally believe that math is truly universal. But maybe I’m being existential ;)
Is someone really arguing that prime numbers are a thing because we have 5 fingers?
I am genuinely interested in your take on how you believe the Peano Axioms could be shown to be false in this universe. They seem pretty darn universal, and have nothing to do with the number of fingers on your hand, or even how many dimensions you perceive.
Americans could at least have the decency to spell “metre” correctly, but no, they have to go and change the spelling of a measurement system they don’t even use.
It’s called “meter” in lots of metric countries though (I know because I live in one).
I’m willing to give them the spelling if they just adopt the fucking metric system.
I’m on the phone with them.
They said they’ll do it after France or Canada does first. Not sure if they got the memo, or if they are just being silly again.
i think it is ok, as meter more correctly matches the pronounciation
Got two letter 'e’s in it, and they’re both pronounced differently. To be fair, it’s far from the most divergent spelling-to-saying word in English. Some wrong-looking abomination like ‘meetir’ would be even better.
Well…at least most of them pronounce data as DAY-TUH because of Star Trek.
The other pronunciation is horrendous.
Speaking of which, aluminum is pronounced fwaganah-schreple.
*aluminium
Watch or I’ll go nucular on your ass
