4 ms·
This is a terrible article in both content and form. Pretty much the only interesting thing in it is the historical connection between the seconds pendulum and
by Camillo 14y ago
This is a terrible article in both content and form. Pretty much the only interesting thing in it is the historical connection between the seconds pendulum and the metre, but then you could just read this instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metre
- shardling 14y agoI guess I find that a weird comment -- the entire point of the article was the historical connection, so if that was the only thing that was interesting, how does that make it terrible? It seems like most people on HN were expecting something very different, and so were disappointed when it was "just" a bit of history. As someone with a backbround in physics, but who had never heard this tidbit, I thought it was pretty neat.
- madaxe 14y agoWell, because his conclusion was basically "shit, I don't know, something to do with sine waves and SHM I guess". I'd explain why here but it wouldn't fit in this margin.
- shardling 14y agoHeh, I guess since I already know how that works out, I'm glad it was glossed over.
- Camillo 14y agoBecause it was horribly written, even for a random blog post; and because the time spent reading it could have been better spent reading the Wikipedia article, which would have been both more informative and more pleasant. Basically, the author wrote a rehash that is worse than its source in every possible way. The only reason to do that is when you're forced to do it, as with an essay in school, or, in this author's case, an arbitrary requirement to write something for Pi day. But that's still no reason to post it on HN.
- Aardwolf 14y agoWhy is meter spelled "metre" in English? English is a Germanic language, and Germanic languages like Dutch and German happen to have the perfectly reasonable word "meter" for this. But for some reason English chose the romance French spelling "metre", that looks really odd outside of French. Why?
- madaxe 14y agoWe formalised spelling in the 18th c., independently of one another. No particular reason beyond that, afaik.
- opminion 14y agoIt's consistent with "centre" vs American "center"
- Camillo 14y agoBecause the word has its origin in the Greek metron, and has nothing to do with Germanic languages whatsoever. Besides, there are countless precedents of English words with a mute final "e" and a schwa inserted between two consonants, e.g. "little".