Science Memes

11278 readers

2771 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Keep it rooted (on topic).
No spam.
Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

[email protected]

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

1023

Sticks (mander.xyz)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

58 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] crispyflagstones 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Sorta. The stade was based on the pous which varied. But not that much, and in ways that are often consistently documented. Around the time Eratosthenes was alive, give or take a couple hundred years, it was documented that 1 Roman mile = 8 stades, which gives us something to go of off. While there are other possible definitions, we do have one that we know is probably closest to whatever Eratosthenes used.

EDIT - the numbers regarding the error range in this source is likely inaccurate, but goes into the units issue

https://maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/eratosthenes-and-the-mystery-of-the-stades-how-long-is-a-stade

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

+/-20% error isn't terrible on a conversion. The fact that it's only 10% offset is crazy though.