Science
Why Are There 5,280 Feet in a Mile?
The basic concept of the mile originated in Roman times. The Romans used a unit of distance called the mille passum, which literally translated into "a thousand paces." Since each pace was considered to be five Roman feet—which were a bit shorter than our modern feet—the mile ended up being 5,000 Roman feet, or roughly 4,850 of our modern feet.
If the mile originated with 5,000 Roman feet, how did we end up with a mile that is 5,280 feet? Blame the furlong. The furlong wasn't always just an arcane unit of measure that horseracing fans gabbed about; it once had significance as the length of the furrow a team of oxen could plow in a day. In 1592, Parliament set about determining the length of the mile and decided that each one should be made up of eight furlongs. Since a furlong was 660 feet, we ended up with a 5,280-foot mile.
Gawd, I've always thought miles were a stupid throwback unit that us Americans use. I spend too much time converting 1610 meters into one mile, which is about a meter to long, but it's much easier to divide into a half mile at 805 meters and a quarter mile at 402 and a half meters. It would be nice to adopt the metric system.
a rising tide of anti-intellectual thinking
If the rise in uninformed opinion was limited to impenetrable subjects that would be one thing, but the scourge seems to be spreading. Everywhere you look these days, America is in a rush to embrace the stupid. Hell-bent on a path that’s not just irrational, but often self-destructive. Common-sense solutions to pressing problems are eschewed in favour of bumper-sticker simplicities and blind faith.
To be fair, there are many intellectuals and scientists who mix science and values. That said, science is often used to hide behind - people don't want to appear to be callous and insensitive.
Some people just arenβt very good with math.
Some people just arenβt very good with math.
Usually those are people with particularly strong ideological predilections.
Periodic Videos – Geissler Tubes – Periodic Table of Videos
The Professor digs out some Geissler Tubes which belonged to his grandfather, Joseph Poliakoff.
What Are Imaginary Numbers?
Imaginary numbers, also called complex numbers, are used in real-life applications, such as electricity, as well as quadratic equations. In quadratic planes, imaginary numbers show up in equations that don’t touch the x axis. Imaginary numbers become particularly useful in advanced calculus.
Usually denoted by the symbol i, imaginary numbers are denoted by the symbol j in electronics (because i already denotes "current"). Imaginary numbers are particularly applicable in electricity, specifically alternating current (AC) electronics. AC electricity changes between positive and negative in a sine wave. Combining AC currents can be very difficult because they may not match properly on the waves. Using imaginary currents and real numbers helps those working with AC electricity do the calculations and avoid electrocution.
Imaginary numbers can also be applied to signal processing, which is useful in cellular technology and wireless technologies, as well as radar and even biology (brain waves). Essentially, if what is being measured relies on a sine or cosine wave, the imaginary number is used.
why the worldβs new definition of mass is such a big achievement – Vox
For more than a century, the kilogram had a very simple definition: It was the mass of a hunk of platinum-iridium alloy that’s been housed at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in SοΏ½vres, France since 1889.
It’s called the International Prototype Kilogram (a.k.a. Big K, or Le Grand K), and it has many copies around the world — including several at NIST in Gaithersburg, Maryland — that are used to calibrate scales and make sure the whole world is on one system of measurement.
These copies make sure a kilogram is a kilogram is a kilogram — whether its being measured on the factory floor of an airplane maker, or on the digital scale at your grocer’s checkout counter. And for those thinking the kilogram doesn’t matter in the US, which uses imperial units like pounds, feet, and gallons, our measurements are derived from SI units. Officially, in the US, 1 pound is defined as 0.45359237 kilograms.
The problem is that Big K is a manmade object, and therefore, it is imperfect. If Big K changes, everything else has to adjust. And this has happened. Big K is not constant. It has lost around 50 micrograms (about the mass of an eyelash) since it was created. But, frustratingly, when Big K loses mass, it’s still exactly one kilogram, per the old definition.