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How Pirates Thwarted America’s Plan to Go Metric
(psnaudus.medium.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
203 points (98.1% liked)
Mildly Interesting
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This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.
This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?
Just post some stuff and don't spam.
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They needed examples. How long is a meter? How heavy is a kilogram?
actually, they didn't need examples (even if it would make things easier.)
for example, the meter was originally defined as one ten millionth of the distance between the equator and the north pole. (which, given the necessary instrumentation, was something "anyone" could measure. well, instrumentation and instruction.) it's now based on the emissions of krypton-86, and the wave length of a certain part of it. Again anyone with the proper tools is able to measure this.)
Similarly, the kilogram was defined- originally- as the mass of one liter of water. the liter was defined as the volume of a cube with a length of ten centimeters.. (today it gets quite a bit more complicated, but based on observable constants...)
This is America, pal. We don't believe anything unless we someone tells it to us with conviction. Hence Donald Trump's presidency.
I can't tell if you're just being honest, or being sarcastic. or like... you know... both.
you have no idea how depressing this is.
I can't tell either, which also depresses me.
One of the ongoing goals in science is to reference all metric units to fundamental forces. Basically, we want a system where you can write down everything you need to recreate all our measurement systems.
Right now, most are referenced that way, but not all. Last I heard the kg was being difficult. I believe the plan is to reference it to a perfect sphere of perfectly crystalline silicon-28 of a given size. Creating such a sphere is extremely difficult however.