> it takes a 1-meter pendulum 1 second to swing from side to side, no matter how high you raise it If I remember correctly, this is true if sin x = x; IOW, "ho

> it takes a 1-meter pendulum 1 second to swing from side to side, no matter how high you raise it If I remember correctly, this is true if sin x = x; IOW, "how high you raise it" is exactly what takes you away from this approximation being true. Also, the meter was also originally defined as 1/10 000 000 of the distance from the north pole to the equator. It just so happens that these two come pretty close (it turns out that they had a big error in their measurement; a quarter-circumference of the earth is closer to 12 000 km than 10 000).