Second is a measure of time. You think its “the time it take for one step”… ?
A day is divided into hours. An hour is divided into smaller pisces, minute pieces. (See how it works as an adjective and a noun?) Then that measure is divided a second time, into secunda pars minuta
That’s why they’re minutes and seconds.
Metres don’t exactly sound like step lengths either
The mètre was introduced – defined as one ten-millionth of the shortest distance from the North Pole to the equator passing through Paris, assuming an Earth flattening of 1/334.
Ever wondered where those magic numbers on that definition come from?
But no, I misremembered it, the relation between the step and a second is a coincidence. It’s the size of the meter that was decided in function of time, in the division that best approximated a step.
I actually went through the entire pdf. Didn’t read all of it, but browsed through and read the parts I though relate to this.
I can’t find anything about the metre ever being from “natural measurements”. Only that the people looking to make the metre debated the subject. But the metre itself was always based on the size of the Earth. But yeah, it’s close to a yard and a yard is 3 feet.
Ofc originally all measurements somehow derive from our bodies, because that’s the first thing we measured with. But like the pdf quite quickly says:
It is universally accepted that the first important stage in the development of metro-
logical concepts related to measures of length is the anthropomorphic one, in which the
main units of measurement are the parts of the human body [3, 4]. As the sociologist
and historian of metrology Witold Kula puts it, “man measures the world with him-
self” [4] — a variation of Protagoras’ “man is the measure of all things”. It is a very
ancient and primitive approach. Certainly, even the first people who adopted such units
must have been aware that the length of their own feet or fingers was different from
their neighbor’s ones. But initially such personal differences did not seem important,
given the low degree of accuracy required in measurements in that social context.
Later the anthropomorphic approach reached a first level of abstraction, charac-
terized by “the shift from concrete representations to abstract ones, from ‘my or your
finger’ to ‘finger in general’ ” 4 [4]. Nevertheless, even when the stage was reached of
conceiving measurement units as abstract concepts, differences in establishing the value
of these units remained, depending on region or time [6, 7, 8, 9].
Only in the eighteenth century, with the consolidation of the experimental method
on one hand, and the drive towards international co-operation and trading on the other,
3All English quotes not referring to English bibliography are translation by the authors.
4The earliest measurement standard we have evidence of is the Egyptian cubit, the length of the
forearm from elbow to fingers, realized around 2500 B.C. in a piece of marble of about 50 centimeters [5].
2
strong emphasis was placed for the first time on the need for standardized units
] one would still have to include an heterogeneous element, time, or what is
here the same thing, the intensity of the gravitational force at the Earth’s surface.
Now, if it is possible to have a unit of length that does not depend on any other
quantity, it seems natural to prefer it.27
[. . . ]
Actually, it is much more natural to refer the distance between two places to a
quarter of one of the terrestrial circles than to refer it to the length of the pendulum.
[. . . ]
The quarter of the Earth meridian would become then the real unit of length; and
the ten million-th part of this length would be its practical unit. (Ref [2], pp. 4-5)
Ugh I’m not gonna format all that. I’m not like trying to say you’re wrong. I’m asking you what you’re trying to say?
Second is a measure of time. You think its “the time it take for one step”… ?
A day is divided into hours. An hour is divided into smaller pisces, minute pieces. (See how it works as an adjective and a noun?) Then that measure is divided a second time, into secunda pars minuta
That’s why they’re minutes and seconds.
Metres don’t exactly sound like step lengths either
Ever wondered where those magic numbers on that definition come from?
But no, I misremembered it, the relation between the step and a second is a coincidence. It’s the size of the meter that was decided in function of time, in the division that best approximated a step.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0412078
I actually went through the entire pdf. Didn’t read all of it, but browsed through and read the parts I though relate to this.
I can’t find anything about the metre ever being from “natural measurements”. Only that the people looking to make the metre debated the subject. But the metre itself was always based on the size of the Earth. But yeah, it’s close to a yard and a yard is 3 feet.
Ofc originally all measurements somehow derive from our bodies, because that’s the first thing we measured with. But like the pdf quite quickly says:
] one would still have to include an heterogeneous element, time, or what is here the same thing, the intensity of the gravitational force at the Earth’s surface. Now, if it is possible to have a unit of length that does not depend on any other quantity, it seems natural to prefer it.27 [. . . ] Actually, it is much more natural to refer the distance between two places to a quarter of one of the terrestrial circles than to refer it to the length of the pendulum. [. . . ] The quarter of the Earth meridian would become then the real unit of length; and the ten million-th part of this length would be its practical unit. (Ref [2], pp. 4-5)
Ugh I’m not gonna format all that. I’m not like trying to say you’re wrong. I’m asking you what you’re trying to say?