Anyone come up with a good measure of distance that makes the speed of light a nice round number? I like the metric system, but the meter feels pretty arbitrary. We could do better!
Originally, the meter was defined as one ten millionth the distance from the north pole to the equator, as it runs through Paris. The unit and system were picked for ease of use for day to day activities. It is also tied to the attributes of our planet, which is also how we derived the time units that we use.
It’s the definition of arbitrary. There’s no reason to pick those specific things to base your system on. They picked them because they’re easy to measure and have a reasonably consistent value over time. Then they divide it by some number that makes it useful on a human scale. There’s nothing fundamental that lead to those values being chosen. They were just useful. Nature doesn’t work on meters. It does work on the speed of light. It is a fundamental unit of nature (excluding the unit of time, which is obviously not fundamental, but we could use any measure of time).
There’s no reason to pick those specific things to base your system on.
If you’re not a human, and not living on earth, and are unconcerned with the day to day activities of humans as they go about their lives on earth, I tend to agree.
Most people on earth don’t care much about Paris. If you ask 1000 people on earth to do this measurement you’d probably get 1000 different answers. Picking the line that goes through Paris is just a random choice that got enough agreement.
Most people on earth don’t care much about Paris. If you ask 1000 people on earth to do this measurement you’d probably get 1000 different answers. Picking the line that goes through Paris is just a random choice that got enough agreement.
It must be so exhilarating for you, asserting your opinions on weights and measures.
Originally, the meter was defined as one ten millionth the distance from the north pole to the equator, as it runs through Paris. The unit and system were picked for ease of use for day to day activities. It is also tied to the attributes of our planet, which is also how we derived the time units that we use.
That’s the opposite of arbitrary, no?
It’s the definition of arbitrary. There’s no reason to pick those specific things to base your system on. They picked them because they’re easy to measure and have a reasonably consistent value over time. Then they divide it by some number that makes it useful on a human scale. There’s nothing fundamental that lead to those values being chosen. They were just useful. Nature doesn’t work on meters. It does work on the speed of light. It is a fundamental unit of nature (excluding the unit of time, which is obviously not fundamental, but we could use any measure of time).
If you’re not a human, and not living on earth, and are unconcerned with the day to day activities of humans as they go about their lives on earth, I tend to agree.
Most people on earth don’t care much about Paris. If you ask 1000 people on earth to do this measurement you’d probably get 1000 different answers. Picking the line that goes through Paris is just a random choice that got enough agreement.
It must be so exhilarating for you, asserting your opinions on weights and measures.