4/18/2026 at 7:35:53 PM
It's just that the French left the greastet Easter Egg of all time when creating the Metric System. They could've just made speed of light some round number, e.g. 1 million km/sec, but that sounded too bland, so they chose the Great Pyramid of Giza instead. The same for the charge of the electronby nasretdinov
4/19/2026 at 12:33:31 AM
If you make that number round, others become not-round.I read [0] that the meter was defined as 1 / 10,000,000th of the distance from the equator to the (north?) pole. The measurement on which that was based was wrong and the actual distance is 10,001,966 meters. If you make that distance round, then the speed of light will almost certainly not be round (now that would be a coincidence!).
But also 1 cm^3 = 1 ml. Perhaps the ml was based on the cm^3. That's practical.
Making a round number for the speed of light or for the distance from equator to pole is practical only for geographers or physicists. What would be most practical to ordinary people as the basis for a meter? A body part (is there a particularly standard body part, with minimal correlation with body size/mass)?
[0] I haven't seen an especially reliable source
by mmooss
4/19/2026 at 6:12:11 AM
Volume is derived from distance yes. There are only 7 'base' SI units: meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole, and candela (luminous intensity), with everything else derived. If you consider that a mole is just an amount (barely a unit at all really) and candelas are extremely specific, it's a pretty tidy system.by recursivecaveat
4/19/2026 at 2:14:37 AM
But if we choose some random mean body part X, then people i, whose Xi < Xm, won't be very happy.by Nevermark
4/19/2026 at 10:24:52 AM
the french chose the distance from the equator to the pole, as it passes through Paris, 1/10000000, but they then had to measure that distance, which they did, in order to get a divisible number to derive the meter from, which, given the time period, was epic. earlier in there endevors to measure things they (the french) were making surface plates in.the early 1600's, that only recently have been checked for flatness, which they maintain to +-1/4000000", hand made, still in there bureau of standards. the given, is just that, arbitrary,always, so there is every reason to "brand" itby metalman