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.

  • janus2@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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    1 year ago

    It’s one of my favorite books of all time 😁 to the point where I own a hardback of it despite being staunchly pro-just-read-books-on-my-phone

    IIRC they actually printed a centimeter ruler in the back of the book as an answer to this specific problem.

    • neptune@dmv.social
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      1 year ago

      What’s the point of recreating our arbitrary system? It just has to be useful and universal

      • janus2@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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        1 year ago

        That’s a fair point. Most likely if a group of people did some kind of Long Term Naked & Afraid experiment they’d just start with some length of particularly well-crafted cordage, call it a New Meter™ and go from there