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!
I use centimeters for certain things, but I call them “inches”.
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
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.
And the fact that Inch is not precisly defined. “Three grains of …” or “King’s thumb” is not a precise definition.
In what context do people use metric units of length larger than a kilometer? 🤨
When measuring my dick.
Well, in Sweden we typically use miles (the matric variant, ie. 10km) to describe distance by car.
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
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.
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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…
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.
.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.
That is impressive & a nice amendment on your part. Thank you for the added detail
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.
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 bugs me so much that they used the decimeter to define the liter and kilogram instead of using a meter to define a liter and gram
Square-Cube law was gonna fuck with that one way or another. A meter is a very human-oriented unit of measure – but a cubic meter of water is a fuckton more than most people have to deal with in the normal course of business.
And we’re gonna call that one gram of water?
One liter of water being 1000cc or one kilogram keeps the scales much more useful, imo. And personally, being essentially a sentient bag of water with a handful of other elements gluing it together…I appreciate that.
Ultimately it’s all the same, anyways. It’s just a matter of the words we call them, the math works out the same, if we just give them different names. That’s the point. Math is the constant. Assuming a space alien can understand Base10, we can explain the metric system in terms of universal constants that make sense in Base10.
Unfortunately, all number systems are Base10…
If we were to make a meter today, I would think it would be a fraction of the speed of light.
And on that note, I honestly think a base 12 number system would be easier in the long run.
The meter is nowadays literally defined as the distance light travels in a certain amount of time, ie through the speed of light.
Coincidentally we accidentally got really close to 1/300 000 000th the speed of light in a vacuum. 299 792 458 m/s.
Honestly, humans are pretty damn lucky when it comes to cosmic coincidences.
Thinking about you, moon and Jupiter.
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
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…
Also, unlike the imperialist system it is not utter horseshite.
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: 2Literally because it scaled
I have this book, its great! Some funny bullshit in there
Hmm… What We Did Before Smartphones. I should write a book so the Young’s dont forget ye olden ways.
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.
Heyyy I’ve got two of Uncle John’s books on the commode right now!
The 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
