this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
840 points (98.2% liked)

Science Memes

11223 readers
3019 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

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

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

Research Committee

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]
[email protected]
[email protected]
840
little hopper (mander.xyz)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
54 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Well you see, in 1793, 'Merica requested the metric artifacts from France so we could be metric too. France sent over a kilogram, but the shipment was lost at sea. And that was a little sad.

All joking aside, US feet, inches, pounds, and so on have been secretly really metric since 1893.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

eh.

Fun fact. if you use your knucklebones to count instead of fingers, and you use multiplication instead of addition you can get to 144 counting on your fingers. (i.e. one digit on the second hand is equal to a full hand- 12- on the first.)

yeah. some bullshit about that being why we have 12 hours, and 12 inches in a foot, is totally going into those golden tablets.

(IIRC, we have 12 hours because there was 10 hours of daylight in Egypt, and an hour on either end for twilight. that evolved into the 24 hour system we have today.)

I think I'll call my new religion ~~Bullcrap~~ ~~Bulk'rap~~ bulq'rap.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

You can count up to 1023 without knucklebones if you use a positional representation.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sumerians also tried to metrify, but the copper weights they bought mysteriously corroded

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Rude.