by HikaruYami » Mon Jul 30, 2018 2:59 pm
Showsni wrote:HikaruYami wrote:https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/literary-analysis
So, I'm aware that we've defined an avoirdupois pound as a unit of mass (rather than merely weight), and
on earth this is essentially exchangeable with a pound in terms of weight (which is not mass).
But then he goes and specifies the chipmunk's weight instead of its mass just to trigger pedants. WHY
The pedant in me wants to say that the whole thing is pointless and we should be looking at relative volumes. For all I know whales are extremely dense compared to humans, so that despite the difference in mass we are exactly the same size.
That's an excellent point--an alien who has studied our mathematical systems but not our biological ones could be incredibly confused.
Kit. wrote:Showsni wrote:For all I know whales are extremely dense compared to humans, so that despite the difference in mass we are exactly the same size.
For all I know, humans represent an extreme diversity of density.
Which is actually sort of *true*, but to be fair, we also represent an extreme diversity of, separately, volumes and heights, so assuming that the presented measurements are a sort of "estimated average" seems fine.
[quote="Showsni"][quote="HikaruYami"]https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/literary-analysis
So, I'm aware that we've defined an avoirdupois pound as a unit of mass (rather than merely weight), and [b]on earth[/b] this is essentially exchangeable with a pound in terms of weight (which is not mass).
But then he goes and specifies the chipmunk's weight instead of its mass just to trigger pedants. WHY :([/quote]
The pedant in me wants to say that the whole thing is pointless and we should be looking at relative volumes. For all I know whales are extremely dense compared to humans, so that despite the difference in mass we are exactly the same size.[/quote]
That's an excellent point--an alien who has studied our mathematical systems but not our biological ones could be incredibly confused.
[quote="Kit."][quote="Showsni"]For all I know whales are extremely dense compared to humans, so that despite the difference in mass we are exactly the same size.[/quote]
For all I know, humans represent an extreme diversity of density.[/quote]
Which is actually sort of *true*, but to be fair, we also represent an extreme diversity of, separately, volumes and heights, so assuming that the presented measurements are a sort of "estimated average" seems fine.