• pseudo@jlai.lu
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    1 month ago

    Actually that is not funny to make fun of thing you don’t understand.

    A clock is a marvel using a plan to represent both numerically and in volume the time passing in an infinitly précise manner as it is continuous. Human reading precision can be chose at the level of the hour, the minute of the second. The 12-base allow a reading of the twelveths of the time period, the thirds, the halves and the quarters. The use of a circle make it possible to use it as a chronometer at any given start and follow the passing of time as your society see it.

    That is just the data representation part!

    The clock is also a marvel of ingeneering in the backend with very complex mecanism giving it a excellent precision and the abillity to run on many many different type of power.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 month ago

      the most impressive thing to me is that people managed to standardize and zero in a precise “second” especially back when seconds were kept by mechanical means. I wonder how they went about ensuring it.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          29 days ago

          is it not dependent on mass at all? It’s possible given that this is the metric system that this is actually just a convenient retroactive truth about meters. I suppose it wouldn’t necessarily be, but then you’re accounting for gravity as well, which means you’re going to need a pretty effective approximation there. As well as a way to account for any mechanical losses as well.

          I’m not sure the metric system even existed when we developed the first mechanical time keeping devices.

          • alsimoneau@lemmy.ca
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            28 days ago

            The mass cancels out.

            I don’t know if it’s purely a coincidence. The meter comes from the Earth’s circumference (1/10 000 000 of the pole-equator distance) and I believe the second is much older, which points to a coincidence.

            • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              28 days ago

              it makes sense that the mass does cancel out, it is a change of potential and kinetic energy at all, i suppose i’m just conflating more complicated things with it lol.

              it’s pretty likely to be a coincidence, but if i had to guess it’s a “lucky coincidence” one that was intentionally chosen because of it’s convenience. Rather than by pure happenstance. There’s not a particularly good reason 1 meter needs to be 1/10000000 the pole equator distance for example. So that would be pretty easy to reverse fudge nicely.