How could SI units be derived from scratch without the use of modern technology? - eviltoast

Think “you wake up in the woods naked,” Dr. Stone-style tech reset. How could humans acquire a 1-gram weight, a centimeter ruler, an HH:MM:SS timekeeping device, etc. starting with natural resources?

My best guess was something involving calibrating a mercury thermometer (after spending years developing glassblowing and finding mercury, lol) using boiling water at sea level to mark 100 ° C and then maybe Fahrenheit’s dumb ice ammonium chloride brine to mark -17.7778 ° C, then figuring out how far apart they should be in millimeters on the thermometer (er, somehow). I can already think of several confounding variables with that though, most notably atmospheric pressure.

I feel like the most important thing to get would be a length measurement since you can then get a 1 gram mass from a cubic centimeter of distilled water.

That’s as far as I got with this thought experiment before deciding to ask the internet. I actually asked on Reddit a while back but never got any responses.

  • DireLlama@ttrpg.network
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Not sure if you’re joking or just having a slow day, but neither the length of a day nor the length of a year are arbitrary. One is the length of a revolution of the earth around its own axis, the other is the time the earth takes to complete a full run around the sun. Those two aren’t fully in sync, and to line them up would require a major feat of astroengineering. Given sufficient advances in science, we might get there in a few millennia, if we’re still around by then, but until then leap years are here to stay.

    • burgersc12@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      Look, i know what it is based on now, I am saying we should change it. Obviously I am not being super serious, but it would be nice to have even numbers instead of how it is now