#units of measurement

[victusinveritas]

[tyunningcore]

THE JOY I FELT HEARING METRIC SYSTEM UNITS ON THIS INSTEAD OF IMPERIAL

[queer-boo-radley]

[enuode-au]

About Writing Heights

Height is measured in blocks and pixels. As stated in the previous measurements post, one block is a meter tall, and a pixel is 5% of a block, or 1/20th of one. Let's take a look at an example:

Lizzie is 10'1, or about 307cm tall. So that's three blocks and one-and-a-half pixels tall. How's that gonna be written?

We write it as 31.5, or "3-subscript-1.5". The block number is always the first number, and the pixel number is second, written in a subscript format, rounding to half a pixel (intervals of 0.5).

We say it as "three one-and-a-half". In settings in which height usually resides within one block range (such as between one and two blocks), such as tight-knit communities of similar race individuals, the block may be cut off entirely. However, in the case of the rulers, it's good to add the block to the number out of formality.

[myprivatelibrary]

I finally make it to the ladder. I stumble forward and grab one of the rungs. I'm just so weak. How am I going to climb a 10-foot ladder? Ten-foot ladder. I think in imperial units. That's a clue. I'm probably an American. Or English. Or maybe Canadian. Canadians use feet and inches for short distances. I ask myself: How far is it from L.A. to New York? My gut answer: 3,000 miles. A Canadian would have used kilometers. So I'm English or American. Or I'm from Liberia. I know Liberia uses imperial units but I don't know my own name. That's irritating. -Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir, p. 12-13

[dat-physics-gal]

A barn-light-eon is about a liter.

I don’t know what to do with that information.

1 barn * 1 eon * 1 speed of light = 0.94 liters

**(barn being a tiny cross sectional area, and an eon is a billion years)

[anonymousqueenofrandom]

Apparently we have a new unit of measurement.

Canadian Geese.

I have so many questions!

[word-for-today]

Word for today: Bubnoff Unit

A unit used by geologists to describe the speed of erosion; one Bubnoff equals one cubic meter of earth moving one meter per million years, or one micrometer per year.

[futurebird]

Stop using "the bomb at Hiroshima" as a unit of measure for the love of all that is decent.

Can pop science writers, documentarians, and science show makers PLEASE stop using "the bomb at Hiroshima" as a unit of measure?

It's just unsettling and at worst sounds like the worst kind of jingoism (if the show is US made), at best tone deaf.

Use an atomic test, or Mt. St. Helen or Tunguska, or "tons of TNT" -- just anything else will do.

The worst is when it's treated like a plural noun. "200 Hiroshimas!" If could never hear that again it would be awesome.

[victusinveritas]

At only 4' 8" tall, Simone Biles' jump clears more than 7 feet 4 inches of air (1 Shaq plus a bit). Or, in library terms, she could jump over roughly 65 James Patterson books.

Americans will use anything but the metric system.

[enuode-au]

Units of Measurement [1]

LENGTH, TIME, TEMPERATURE

Length

Pixel [px] - Smallest Unit (0.0625m, 0.21ft/2.46in)

Block [bl] - 16 pixels (1m, 3.28ft)

Chunk [ch] - 16 blocks (16m, 52.49ft)

World [ow] - 16 chunks (256m, 839.89ft, 0.16mi)

Border [bo] - 16 worlds (4096m, 13438.32ft, 2.5mi)

EXAMPLE:

Earth has a circumference of 40,075,000 meters (aka blocks).

This means that it has a circumference of 2,504,687.5 chunks, 156,542.97 worlds, and 9,783.94 borders.

NOTES:

There's no inches, centimeters, miles, whatever.

No one knows why the abbreviation for "world" is [ow] and not [wo]. In reality, it stands for Old World.

No one knows where the term "border" came from. In reality, it came from the existence of world borders, and how borders can have extra space beyond them.

Time

Tick [ti] - Smallest Unit

Second [sec] - 20 ticks

Minute [min] - 1,200 ticks

IGD [igd] - 24,000 ticks, 20 minutes

Hour [hr] - 60 minutes

Day [dy] - 24 hours

Month [mon] - Varies

Year [yr] - 365 days (no leap years)

NOTES:

No one knows why IGDs are called what they are. In reality, it stands for In-Game Day.

Temperature

Degrees [deg] - Sole Unit

EXAMPLE:

Biome temperature ranges from -0.7 to 2.0. Multiplying that by 16, and then 16 again, makes the temperatures go from -179.2 to 512.0 degrees. 26deg (~74F) is an average temperature.

The highest temperature on the scale is 512deg (1461F).

The lowest temperature on the scale is -179.2deg (-511.47F).

Freezing is 11deg, and boiling is 74deg. Average human body temperature is 34.5deg.

[fshoulders]

I used to volunteer at a science museum and once we had a fossil exhibit (FINALLY! said my little paleo-teen self) and my favorite job was, of course, sitting at a table with fossils and reproduction fossils, talking about them to passersby.

We had a repro O. megalodon tooth, and the binder that trained us on our Fossil Facts told us how long the living shark would have been. Because everyone asks. The estimate they had at the time was something like 54 feet. (I know, they say longer now!) Anyway, adults always responded to this number with eyebrows up, and kids…did not absorb this fact. Their mouths stayed open because they were looking at the tooth, but they did not take it in. So I went home and searched on the internet (yes, we had to go home to do that, I’m old.) for the size of a yellow school bus (I’m also American), which seemed to be about 45 feet. So the next time a kid asked how big the shark was, I leaned in and said “It was 54 feet long.” (Parent’s eyebrows go up.) “That’s bigger than your school bus.” Screaming! Carrying on! Grabbing other kids to see the tooth! Highly satisfactory.

Anyway, if you live somewhere where kids go to school or field trips in a big school bus, highly recommend storing this Megalodon fact in your head to amaze the kiddos. It’s not just that it’s a size they can comprehend: it’s that they are automatically imagining themselves inside. 🦈

One of my favourite parts of working with kids is like… Very Gently subverting their idea of gendered topics… Like if a girl goes ‘no, sharks are a boy thing’ and you go “UM ACTUALLY THATS STUPID AND INCORRECT” they get freaked out, but if instead u go “Are you sure? Cause I think sharks are awesome, here’s a scale picture of a Megalodon” it’ll blow their tiny mind and they’ll be shitting themselves over it for days. 100% effective, 10/10 recommend

[msexcelfractal]

metric is so convenient!

m³ = kL dm³ = L cm³ = mL mm³ = μL

ignore the m,easurements behing the curtain

[pansy-placebo]

Ferrets work as a perfectly functional unit of time. Remind me to break out the graphs to explain that in like, a ferret or so. I would love to explain my findings.

[victusinveritas]