http://wiki.keithl.com/SevenMeasures
The Seven Measures of the World
Piero Martin 2021/2023 CedarMill 530.18 Martin
fusion researcher at University of Padova
Translated from Italian by Gregory Conti
p008 stere cubic meter of cut firewood
- p008 meter defined as 1e-7 of distance from North Pole to Equator through Paris
p009 1960 Oct 15 Hamburg: John/Paul/George/Ringo record Gershwin's Summertime Pete Best?
p009 Original Système international d'unités was meter, second, kilogram, ampere, Kelvin, candela; mole added in 1971
- p011 Redefined 2018 Nov 16 by fundamental physical constants
p016 1946 May 3 Einstein attends Lincoln University graduation, "first college degree for an African American student"
er, no, Alexander Lucius Twilight 1823 from Middlebury College in Vermont
p021 Roman passus 1.48 meters 4.854 feet, left+right step, hence 29 inches per step
p026 International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sèvres? (or Saint-Cloud?) near Paris
p028 Heinrich Hertz 1893? Maxwell electromagnetic waves "will have any practical application"
p039 "c" either constant or celeritas (velocity)
p049 Luxor Obelisk traded for mechanical clock in 1830
p051 Galileo timing cathedral lamp swing, isochronism of the pendulum
p052 Galileo draws first pendulum clock?
- his son Vincenzo makes prototype? citation needed
p052 Christiaan Huygens first functional prototype 1656
p054 Beethoven may have misread his metronome, too-fast tempo on symphony scores compared to modern interpretations
p055 Quartz wristwatch 32768 Hz crystal, accurate to 15 seconds per month ? ... my digital watch is better than 5 seconds in six months
p057 Cesium 133 clocks 9,192,631,770 Hz. Book error, says "per minute"
p058 NIST Clock accuracy one second in 3e8 years, 1e-16
p060 Picasso sketch: "it didn't take eight seconds to make this drawing, it took eighty years"
p069 Atomic clock in Fréjus Road Tunnel altitude 1200m ran faster than in Turin 200m
- p069 special relativity slows GPS clocks by 7μs per day ... no faster, orbiting about 94% out of the gravity well minus 3% for orbital velocity. 7 microseconds or two kilometers per day
p074 Laura Fermi Jewish, so Enrico and wife left Italy in 1938
p074 Eugene Fubini ditto, followed Fermis to US
p076 Fritz Haber also Jewish, developed Zyklon-B, died in Switzerland 1934
p077 Erwin Planck hanged 1945 Jan 23 for Operation Valkyrie Hitler assassination attempt 19444
p079 Talent 26? Kg ... if silver, a month's salary for trireme crew of 200
p081 carat was weight of 200 mg carob seed
- p081 kilogram / liter of water redefined from 0℃ to maximum density 4℃, more stable
p082 1875 International Prototype Kilogram gained 50 micrograms in 100 years
- p085 1919 eclipse test of relativity, wild New York Times headline reported from London by NYT golf correspondent
p085 anecdote: Eddington told 3 people understood relativity; he wondered who the third was.
p085 Feynman: many people understand relativity, nobody understands quantum mechanics
p090 Svante Arrhenius Worlds in the Making 1908 future ages better climate
p095 Cumaean Sibyl
- "You will go, you will return, never in war you will perish" OR
- "You will go, you will return never, in war you will perish"
p101 Kibble balance defines Kilogram using Planck's constant measured with Josephson effect and Quantum Hall effect
- p111 "The prevalence of Aristotelian theories put an end to the development of the sciences for more than a millennium"(??)
perhaps 350 BC to >650 AD??
- Archimedes principle 246 BC
2nd century BC Hipparchos
- 2nd century AD Ptolemy Optics, refractive angles
- 2nd century AD Galen anatomy of pigs
- development of mathematics and trigonometry in India
- indeed, science bypassed Europe until Roger Bacon in the 13th century, but that was chaos after Rome fell
p112 Santorio Santorio body temperature thermometer 1600s
- p114 Thermometers now use alcohol or gallium alloy rather than mercury
p117 Celsius scale, originally 0 boil 100 melting ice
p117 Paolo Villagio film comedian (not available here)
p118 James Prescott Joule English brewer, water stirring energy to heat
p119 tombstone with 722.55, foot pounds to BTU
p122 Kelvin defined with Boltzmann constant after 2019
- p122 Only the United States, some Pacific islands, the Cayman Islands, and Liberia officially use Fahrenheit
- p123 Coldest 48-state temperature was -57℃ at Rogers Pass MT in 1954
p123 World record -89.2C July 21, 1983 at Antarctic Russian Vostok research station
p123 NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter measured -240℃ (33.15K) near lunar south pole
p132 László Bíró invented ballpoint pen ~1930
p132 Marcel Bich bought patent for US$2M, producing Bic Cristal pen
p133 100 billion Bic pens in 2005 40 times distance to Moon, book says 320,000 times
BIC pen 14.5 cm without the cap, distance to Moon 382,500 km, I calculate 2.6e9 pen lengths to the Moon. Guardian accurate, book wrong
- p136 Italian circuit breaker called "salvavita" or lifesaver
p136 Greek Magnesia Prefecture where magnetized iron ore is common
p137 Giovanni Giorgi proposed 4th MKS unit in 1901, led to Ampere MKSA system in 1946
p153 Primo Levi 1919-1987 Jewish-Italian
wikipedia: chemist at Auschwitz Buna Werke
- traded lab materials for food
The Reawakening Central 940.5318 L6645r 1995
p154 The Periodic Table Primo Levi Beaverton 854.914 LEV
p156 If This Is a Man Beaverton 940.5318 LEV
p158 Moplen isotactic Polypropylene
p167 Concetto Marchesi
p169 last paragraph
- Gentlemen, in these hours of anguish, among the ruins of an implacable war, the academic year of our University reopens. None of us, or the young, lacks the spirit of salvation, when we have this, everything will resurrect what was badly destroyed, and everything will be fulfilled, what was rightly hoped for. Young people trust in Italy. Trust in your fortune if it is supported by your discipline and your courage: trust in Italy that must live for the joy and the decorum of the world, in Italy that cannot fall into servitude without obscuring the civilization of the peoples. On this day 9 November 1943 in the name of this Italy of workers, artists, scientists, I declare open the 722nd year of Padua University.
A few weeks afterward, Marchesi travelled to Padua, Milan, Switzerland, in contact with Italian Resistance
p174 Jan Ingenhousz Smallpox innoculation Austrian royalty
p175 Voltaire's Letters Concerning the English Language PSU PQ2086.L4 E5 1994
p175 Ingenhousz 1779 measured oxygen bubbles from plants ... photosynthesis
- p177 Average Earth surface temperature 14℃, 1/3 solar radiation reflected, 2/3 absorbed and radiated as infrared
- p177 reflected back, greenhouse effect, otherwise average temperature would be -18℃
- p179 phytoplankton produce half of oxygen in the atmosphere
p181 candela visible light weighted by the luminous efficiency function, the average spectral sensitivity of human visual perception of light
- p182 The chosen radiant was platinum at its melting point ( 1768C ) and standard pressure
p184 Grand Duke of Tuscany abolished death penalty in 1786
- p186 Otherwise, we focus on the clean air where electric cars are plentiful and believe we have solved the problem, but we forget that if electricity comes mainly from fossil fuels, as happens today, we are merely shifting the pollution from one place to another.
- p187 Science is not an automatic dispenser of certainties, from which anyone can take what they need. On the contrary, scientific discoveries are the fruit of doubts and errors, which, for researchers, are not a reason for shame but rather a powerful instrument of knowledge. And they make science more human. Indeed, errors and doubts are just as fundamental for life as they are for research.
- p187 Gianni Rodari 1964 Il libro degli errori The Book of Errors