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The only units I will accept having similar names are the statute and nautical miles. Everything else needs to get with the Highlander Protocol. That goes double for survey miles.
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May 23, 2019 08:31
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Scarodactyl posted:Imperial is a mess but at least it has better roots than 'one ten millionth of what someone once thought the quarter circumferance of the earth to be, in the 1700s,' or the 'has a sciency-sounding basis while being actively bad for actual scientific usage and ignoring comfort' celsius. I've never been in a position to actually use them, but I've had a fondness for Natural unit systems ever since I learned about them. Speed of light? 1. 1 unit distance per 1 unit time. E=mc² reduces to E=m.
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May 23, 2019 09:02
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Vavrek posted:I've never been in a position to actually use them, but I've had a fondness for Natural unit systems ever since I learned about them. Speed of light? 1. 1 unit distance per 1 unit time. E=mc² reduces to E=m. Ask a physicist and π = 1.
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May 23, 2019 09:09
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What weighs more, 100 pounds of feathers, or 100 pounds of gold? The feathers, obviously, because when weighing precious metals, you use troy weight for some goddamn reason.
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May 23, 2019 09:28
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DocCynical posted:What weighs more, 100 pounds of feathers, or 100 pounds of gold? The feathers, obviously, because when weighing precious metals, you use troy weight for some goddamn reason. The gold likely weighs more because its centre of mass is closer to the centre of the Earth, unless you did something weird like scatter the feathers everywhere while the gold is in a small tower. An alternate concern leads to the same answer: some authorities consider weight to be the net force after the effects of buoyancy. If there is a hundred pounds‐mass of both substances, the feathers will displace more air and thereby weigh less.
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May 23, 2019 09:41
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Platystemon posted:An alternate concern leads to the same answer: some authorities consider weight to be the net force after the effects of buoyancy. If there is a hundred pounds‐mass of both substances, the feathers will displace more air and thereby weigh less. So your helium balloon actually weighs more on the moon?
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May 23, 2019 09:43
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Jabor posted:So your helium balloon actually weighs more on the moon? If you define weight as something like "force in the direction of local gravity acting on whatever it's resting on top of", then yes. I guess this is one way to talk about how things feel lighter under water, too?
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May 23, 2019 10:14
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Has anyone in this thread watched the HBO Chernobyl show? It’s really entertaining, but I don’t know enough about the history of the disaster or the physics at play to know how accurate the show is.
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May 23, 2019 12:32
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Alternative pants posted:Has anyone in this thread watched the HBO Chernobyl show? It’s really entertaining, but I don’t know enough about the history of the disaster or the physics at play to know how accurate the show is. According to boffins on the internet, it's fairly accurate. It's certainly horrifying enough, and I didn't sleep well after the last episode... Acute radiation sickness is no joke.
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May 23, 2019 13:28
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It's very accurate in almost every way, down to the layout of wreckage after the explosion in the aerial shots. One the characters is a composite of several real people but I've not seen anything in the show that deviates heavily from reality. The only divergence I've noticed is that the helicopter that crashed was later on I believe, not on the second day of the incident, but the circumstances were largely identical.
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May 23, 2019 13:43
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The SI unit for time should be the quarter note.
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May 23, 2019 13:58
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Personally my least favorite quirk of SI notation is that they originally called it degrees Kelvin, but then went back and just changed it to Kelvins because  it isn't degrees because its an absolute scaleWhich is just the most pedantic poo poo. (In terms of actual units, in addition to the speed of light thing, what i hate most is that they hosed up Celsius and put the triple point of water at 0.01 degrees instead of a flat zero)
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May 23, 2019 14:04
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Arglebargle III posted:The SI unit for time should be the quarter note. a quarter note isn't a unit of time it's just a division of a beat?
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May 23, 2019 14:07
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Planck time is just a 1.0×10-64th note.
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May 23, 2019 14:22
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Moist von Lipwig posted:Planck time is just a 1.0×10-64th note. ayy lmao
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May 23, 2019 14:33
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Moist von Lipwig posted:Planck time is just a 1.0×10-64th note. Good luck writing a note with 211 beams.
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May 23, 2019 16:34
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Serephina posted:I love hearing yanks try to rationalize their fear of metric. Weird. Every time I've been to the UK, the road distances are marked in miles and the car speedometer in mph and people still talk about how many stones things weigh.
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May 23, 2019 16:48
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Moist von Lipwig posted:It's very accurate in almost every way, down to the layout of wreckage after the explosion in the aerial shots. One the characters is a composite of several real people but I've not seen anything in the show that deviates heavily from reality. The only divergence I've noticed is that the helicopter that crashed was later on I believe, not on the second day of the incident, but the circumstances were largely identical. The show made it look like it crashed because it went into the smoke. It didn't, it just clipped a hanging cable from a crane. Also the one physicist claims that you'd get a 2-3 megaton steam explosion from the core melting its way into the water tank, which is orders of magnitude too high. But other than that it's pretty goddamned accurate.
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May 23, 2019 16:51
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When it's finished I'm going to track down a way to watch it and binge watch it. Radiation is my job and I've studied Chernobyl in school so I'm kind of curious how it holds up. I watched through Jack Ryan recently and I was okay with all of the crazy poo poo that was happening but I found "massive unshielded vials of cesium-137 powder can be handled by hand safely and are also too radiologically weak to be detected by customs inspections" to be almost too much for me. Like dude, my university has a concrete bunker and a several tonne lead case with remote control for a Cs-137 source a small fraction of the size of just one of the vials shown in the show. Still a step above "Unthinkable" and its nuclear bomb featuring a gas tank of "plutonium" though BattleMaster has a new favorite as of 18:50 on May 23, 2019 |
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May 23, 2019 18:48
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DocCynical posted:What weighs more, 100 pounds of feathers, or 100 pounds of gold? The feathers, obviously, because when weighing precious metals, you use troy weight for some goddamn reason. 
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May 23, 2019 23:59
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My favorite argument against metrics was a guy who argued that half a liter of beer is just not enough, and a liter of beer is too much, but a pint! Ah, a pint is just the right amount of beer. (Which is of course wrong. A place near me does $7 liters and pub trivia, and a liter is quite enough to keep me happy for the duration.)
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May 24, 2019 01:10
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darthbob88 posted:My favorite argument against metrics was a guy who argued that half a liter of beer is just not enough, and a liter of beer is too much, but a pint! Ah, a pint is just the right amount of beer. 1 pint is 0.47 liters. 
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May 24, 2019 01:27
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:1 pint is 0.47 liters. I think you mean 0.57L?
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May 24, 2019 01:32
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One liter of beer is too much for who? People who don’t like beer?
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May 24, 2019 01:33
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It’s from 1984, Orwell was talking about Imperial Pints.
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May 24, 2019 01:34
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The Lone Badger posted:I think you mean 0.57L? https://www.google.com/search?q=1+pint+in+liters is what I was basing it on, but Schadenboner posted:It’s from 1984, Orwell was talking about Imperial Pints. explains it, yeah, that's .568 liters to the pint. And that explains a story I'd heard elsewhere, that when the UK went through metrification, there was some degree of consternation precisely around the amount of beer in one drink. As I recall the solution was that you had to sell in metric, but there was nothing stopping you from over-filling the glass. So you'd buy a half-liter and get an (imperial) pint.
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May 24, 2019 01:42
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:https://www.google.com/search?q=1+pint+in+liters is what I was basing it on, but There’s some sort of Québécois lifehacker-tier “trick” involving how to order a pint at bars in Quebec or some poo poo stemming from this IIRC?
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May 24, 2019 01:44
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:As I recall the solution was that you had to sell in metric, but there was nothing stopping you from over-filling the glass. So you'd buy a half-liter and get an (imperial) pint.
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May 24, 2019 01:47
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Schadenboner posted:There’s some sort of Québécois lifehacker-tier “trick” involving how to order a pint at bars in Quebec or some poo poo stemming from this IIRC? No, half of them will sell you 16oz (or in the case of a crook who owns a bunch of dives in Montréal, 14oz)and call it a pint, others will do a proper 18-20oz cause a pint doesn't mean a thing here. It's shorthand for "a large", contrasted with "a glass" for "a small". It's pretty dumb. Also good luck getting a full glass ever.
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May 24, 2019 02:15
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DigitalRaven posted:Good luck writing a note with 211 beams. Seems fine?! 
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May 24, 2019 04:03
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The Lone Badger posted:Why not just sell 570ml? Because you try telling the average British pubgoer they'll have to order in metric and see how they react.
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May 24, 2019 05:41
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Because you try telling the average British pubgoer they'll have to order in metric and see how they react. They'd just invent some insane contraction for it. They'd come up with "f'seml" or something.
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May 24, 2019 05:45
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Carbon dioxide posted:In the Netherlands, 100g is also commonly used in stores. It's called an ons (ounce). The absolute worst is gross and net tons being used to refer to short and long tons, which are all loving terrible because only metric tons should be used anyway.
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May 24, 2019 06:27
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BrandorKP posted:The absolute worst is gross and net tons being used to refer to short and long tons, which are all loving terrible because only metric tons should be used anyway. This one is metric’s fault for co‐opting the name. There’s a perfectly fit prefix for the purpose, but almost no one uses “megagrams”. It’s exactly as stupid as if “mile” was used for a distance of one thousand metres.
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May 24, 2019 06:34
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Platystemon posted:This one is metric’s fault for co‐opting the name. In German and Dutch, the Seven-League Boots from fairytales are called Seven-Mile Boots.
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May 24, 2019 07:00
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Phanatic posted:One liter of beer is too much for who? People who don’t like beer? It goes hot and flat too quickly. I’m sure you’ll say “drink quicker” but I also have to factor in toilet trips. Also, don’t bother telling an Australian to drink more. We get it.
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May 24, 2019 08:25
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Capt.Whorebags posted:It goes hot and flat too quickly. I’m sure you’ll say “drink quicker” but I also have to factor in toilet trips. Just take the beer in with you, not a big deal?
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May 24, 2019 11:46
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Schadenboner posted:Just take the beer in with you, not a big deal? Oh. That's what you mean by free refills.
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May 24, 2019 14:25
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Exit Strategy posted:Oh. AustralianBeerJoke.txt?
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May 24, 2019 14:28
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Platystemon posted:It’s exactly as stupid as if “mile” was used for a distance of one thousand metres. We just went over this; it's 10000. 
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May 24, 2019 16:12
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