And what would be the weight?
From reading this…
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/637/whats-the-origin-of-miles-and-yards
I was pondering, why the ancients didn’t use a more practical approach to measurements.
Considering water is all over and pretty much acts the same all around. (unsure about barometric pressure on a droplet)
Couldn’t a water droplet be a source for weights and measurement in the days of ol’?
I give up. How do you create a standard droplet?
Before anyone says it, the metric system created a system of sizes and weights first and then fit water into it. The OP is asking for the reverse, and that’s not possible.
…well from unscientific direct observation…i can guess between 3/16 - 1/4 "…or about 5 millimeters.
Would that be a good base to count up from, divide by half’s for smaller dimensions and multiply by 10 for larger?
I was asking why the ancients didn’t find a better base for measuring.
Beside someone finger…or other body part.
Barley was used as a measurement standard. It’s probably a lot easier to handle than drops of water.
OK, lemme ask this way…
You have been transported back to ancient Egypt 10,000 BCE, before the construction of any pyramids…
They want a temple built…it is up to you to make the Pharaoh happy.
How do you find a source to reference size and weight, so your workers can make what you need?
Besides scratching on a stick some bisected lines, and a hefty rock.
Its not really useful having a system of measures thats more exactly defined then your ability to measure things. I imagine the ancients were pretty limited in their ability or desire to make exacting measurements, so having a standard that was easily accessible, like a body part, was probably more important then having something that didn’t vary by more then one part in a trillion or whatever.
I think the ancients should have based their units of measurement on a piece of string.
They’re still figuring out agriculture at this time, so I think you’ll have more fundamental problems then building a temple. There aren’t even any cities yet.
Droplets of water vary in size a heck of a lot more than human fingers. Are you seriously suggesting that you’ve never in your life seen a really big or really small water droplet?
i tried that once and every time i placed the drop against something i was measuring the drop disappeared into a wet spot. a measuring stick that destroys itself as you use it.
drops can be made in lots of different sizes.
Yeah, but a free-falling drop of relatively pure water (containing no surfactants or viscosity-enhancing compounds, at least) dripping from a small spout or capillary is consistently about 0.05 mL. At least, that’s what we were taught in basic chemistry lab when we did titration experiments: 20 drops is roughly one milliliter.
So a free-falling drop of pure water is in fact a fairly consistent measure of a tiny mass or volume. Especially if you add up some of them and thus average out individual drop size differences.
And so handy!
Or hip depth on a tall Neanderthal.
A free-falling drop dripping from a titration burette, maybe…but that’s because they are standardized and the source of the drop is of a consistent size across burettes. The size of the nozzle affects the droplet size - the burette isn’t producing any sort of “standard” water droplet that represents other droplets existing in nature.