Our Sun only looks yellow because of impurities in our atmosphere. If it were really yellow, it would be emitting yellow light… which would mean that everything (illuminated by sunlight) that currently looks white (reflects all light) would be yellow. Our Sun emits white light. Imagine skiing on a yellow slope.
I would vote for a more science literate populace that would want to describe things as important to us as the Sun & moon as accurately as possible (especially in schools). There’s always one joker out there who wants to represent the Sun as a smiley face. I get it. But, I’d like to think that people would recognize that as artistic license, rather than reality.
How about not being able to figure out what war a book written in the 1920s is referring to when it talks of “The Great War,” and after it is explained, still somehow not getting why it wasn’t referred to as “WWI”?
Here is a graphic from Wikipedia that pretty well sums up this subject. Have a look at the irradiance in the visible portion of the spectrum. It’s fairly, but not perfectly, even.
Sunlight as seen from the surface of the Earth is pretty much what we’ve defined as our standard of “white”. I think that people mostly think of the Sun itself as yellow by contrast with the blue of the sky.
And beowulff, if the CAD system is only displaying to three decimal places, then we’re not comparing 0.360 to 0.3603; we’re comparing 0.360 to 0.360 . And if that’s not good enough for the application we’re working on, then you need to change the settings on how many digits the CAD system displays.
It doesn’t matter how many digits the drawing specifies. If the client measures the part and it is even .1mil over the spec (.360), then it will be rejected, and no amount of eggheaded explanation about how significant digits work is going to get them to pay for it…
Isn’t there a Yiddish expression, “Kosher chazzer fissel” ( =“Kosher pigs’ feet”) – to the general effect of “I entertain doubts as to the truthfulness / sense-making / probity, of what you are saying” ?
In addition to this, atmospheric distortion that makes the sun look yellow at certain times, and just artistic representations of the sun that make it yellow, some people may also be misled from hearing it referred to as a “yellow dwarf star,” as we learned in one of our science classes in grammar school.
ETA: Dammit, I see ioioio has already made that point.
I guess I’d better out myself. My husband bought baby cucumbers and gave me one. I said, “This looks like a pickle!” And then it dawned on me… Pickles are made from cucumbers.
Being a customer doesn’t mean you’re right. Being a customer only means that they are the customer. An intelligent customer is not going to reject parts that meet the agreed-to requirements. In fact, an intelligent customer may even accept parts that technically may be slightly out of spec, but will work for his intended purpose. The sales guys have ways of handling customers who make unreasonable demands.
I find it stunning the number of people who do not understand this.
The one that stuns me is how few people understand the “best by date” on a product. It means one and only one thing: The retailer is not obliged to refund your purchase price after the best by date, regardless of reason, whether it be spoilage, freshness, appearance, or any other characteristic of the product or its package. Contrary to widespread belief, it does NOT mean that you go into sudden throes of horrific death if you consume the product at 12:01 AM the day after the best by date.
On the first day of my college History 101 class (circa 1980), the professor stated that many college students believed that the U.S. had won the Vietnam war. The slacker sitting next to me turned and asked me if we’d won World War II.
