Fun Stuff > CHATTER
miscellaneous musings
Thrillho:
Gotta say after the discussion that ensued after that triangle photo in the previous page I'm feeling a little bit like a mathematical idiot. I had to do the actual maths involved (a squared plus b squared equals c squared) to get the answer.
nekowafer:
I didn't even remember the math required to solve it, if that makes you feel any better
Method of Madness:
Ok, here's what I don't get. The metric system, for the most part, makes sense. The only thing that seems unnecessarily complicated is the definition of a meter as "the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second." Ok, if that's how you're going to measure a meter, and you already know how generally long it is, why not define a meter as an even 1/300,000,000th of a light second?
cesium133:
--- Quote from: Method of Madness on 25 Aug 2014, 14:50 ---Ok, here's what I don't get. The metric system, for the most part, makes sense. The only thing that seems unnecessarily complicated is the definition of a meter as "the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second." Ok, if that's how you're going to measure a meter, and you already know how generally long it is, why not define a meter as an even 1/300,000,000th of a light second?
--- End quote ---
Because then the length of the meter would have changed by about 100 microns. It doesn't sound like a whole lot, but that amount matters.
Method of Madness:
No, no, I mean why wasn't the meter originally decided as that amount? Or was the meter much older than the current measurement?
That is, was the meter that length, and people made the connection to the light second after the fact? Or was the meter always measured in connection with it?
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