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 .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
  . https://archive.org/details/librodeglierrori0000unse/page/2/mode/2up
  . https://www.seps.it/en/node/4238

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"

  • 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 PLOS One 2020 Castro Úcar

  • 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

  • p121 William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin River Kelvin

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

SevenMeasures (last edited 2025-04-11 07:39:00 by KeithLofstrom)