Okay so we all know the classic misuse of light years as a measure of time when it's a measure of distance and maybe some of you can point out others you've come across. Here are two recent ones from me:
1. The first was on youtube, one of those videos that comes on between songs if you don't have an adblocker, it was something about minorities getting "only a fraction" of construction contracts handed out by the city (or something like that). Unless every single contract went to a minority, they were bound to get
only a fraction of them.
2. The second is direct from today's CNN homepage stories ("US Postal Service releases national dog bite rankings")...
| In 2022, California had the highest number of dog bites with 675. Texas and New York were not far behind with 404 and 321 bites, respectively, the Postal Service reported. |
I'm sorry, but 404 and 321
are far behind 675. In fact, 321 is less than half of 675. If that's not far behind, then where do you draw the line? Did Twice a Prince and My Gallant finish "not far behind" Secretariat in the Belmont Stakes?
Having been in medical sales l years I have refused to use the marketing crap we get from those departments. It invariably uses crap stats they hope the Clinicians dont look into which are always skewed.
Example: you look up in the sky and someone says that star is one light year away. If you want to find out how long it took the light you are seeing from that star to reach earth you need to know the speed of light and distance. One light year=5.879 trillion miles.
Divide that by speed of light (186,000 miles per second) and you get 31.5 million seconds which = 365 days = one year. So you would know the light you are seeing from that star originated 1 year ago which is the same as a light year distance.
So a light year already does the math for you IF you are interested in determining time in years relative to the speed of light.
I am going to put the bong down now....
Unrelated to the above, the term 10 year storm (x year storm) is used incorrectly all the time. You can have a 10 year storm hit every year, twice a month, etc. It merely represents the probability of a storm of a certain magnitude occurring on a yearly basis. So if you get hit with a 100 year storm tomorrow, don't think you are out of the woods for the rest of your life.
Not math but this one kills me... "He left his feet to make the catch!" Really did he "leave his feet" or did his "feet leave the ground."
Oh really? So an 8-8 team should then?
Or.... "The backed into the playoffs"
Or... "He caught the ball at its highest point!" We no he actually didn't.
The math isn't wrong, but the intent is misleading.
And, as George Carlin once said, you don't take a piss, you leave one.
The math isn't wrong, but the intent is misleading.
And, as George Carlin once said, you don't take a piss, you leave one.
It was shit...but I give you high marks for effort.
"that will make it 1-0," or whatever the count was.
"No," he would scream...."that will not make it 1-0, it just made it 1-0!"
He also took issue with the nightly news back during the Iran Hostage situation referring to the US hostages as "our hostages."
"Christ," he used to say, "they're not our hostages, they're their hostages, otherwise they wouldn't be hostages at all!"
And, Curt Gowdy saying "their future is definitely ahead of them."
No shit, Curt!
I miss my dad...
Kind of like how students misinterpret confidence infevals.
"that will make it 1-0," or whatever the count was.
"No," he would scream...."that will not make it 1-0, it just made it 1-0!"
He also took issue with the nightly news back during the Iran Hostage situation referring to the US hostages as "our hostages."
"Christ," he used to say, "they're not our hostages, they're their hostages, otherwise they wouldn't be hostages at all!"
And, Curt Gowdy saying "their future is definitely ahead of them."
No shit, Curt!
I miss my dad...
I can't stand when people are trying to collect money and they say, "Will you support cancer?" No, I will not support cancer.
Example: you look up in the sky and someone says that star is one light year away. If you want to find out how long it took the light you are seeing from that star to reach earth you need to know the speed of light and distance. One light year=5.879 trillion miles.
Divide that by speed of light (186,000 miles per second) and you get 31.5 million seconds which = 365 days = one year. So you would know the light you are seeing from that star originated 1 year ago which is the same as a light year distance.
So a light year already does the math for you IF you are interested in determining time in years relative to the speed of light.
I am going to put the bong down now....
Unrelated to the above, the term 10 year storm (x year storm) is used incorrectly all the time. You can have a 10 year storm hit every year, twice a month, etc. It merely represents the probability of a storm of a certain magnitude occurring on a yearly basis. So if you get hit with a 100 year storm tomorrow, don't think you are out of the woods for the rest of your life.
Not really. It is a distance. By your logic, a mile is a unit of time because if you know how fast you are driving, you can know how long it will take to get somewhere.
"It makes no sense!"
He's not wrong. Most of those newsreaders have probably never laid eyes on a differential.
It irks me.
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While yes a light year is a measure of distance, I'd also argue it's got a unit of time baked into it in SOME circumstances.
Example: you look up in the sky and someone says that star is one light year away. If you want to find out how long it took the light you are seeing from that star to reach earth you need to know the speed of light and distance. One light year=5.879 trillion miles.
Divide that by speed of light (186,000 miles per second) and you get 31.5 million seconds which = 365 days = one year. So you would know the light you are seeing from that star originated 1 year ago which is the same as a light year distance.
So a light year already does the math for you IF you are interested in determining time in years relative to the speed of light.
I am going to put the bong down now....
Unrelated to the above, the term 10 year storm (x year storm) is used incorrectly all the time. You can have a 10 year storm hit every year, twice a month, etc. It merely represents the probability of a storm of a certain magnitude occurring on a yearly basis. So if you get hit with a 100 year storm tomorrow, don't think you are out of the woods for the rest of your life.
Not really. It is a distance. By your logic, a mile is a unit of time because if you know how fast you are driving, you can know how long it will take to get somewhere.
Distance and time interact with each other in our brains all the time, and it's not just light years. Your point of using mileage as a measure of time does happen quite frequently because we use MPH as our unit of velocity - that calculation is taking distance over time to quantify speed, and when MPH is at exactly 60 (or relatively close), many people (consciously or unconsciously) use mileage to estimate time.
Any regular metric that uses two variable measurements to calculate a third measurement can obviously be (and often is) calculated in reverse to identify any of the three variables as long as two of them are known. And we often use +/- miles vs. minutes to determine something as colloquial as "making good time" on a route. So in practical terms, mileage is being used tangentially as a unit of time because our expectations on the latter are tied to the former.
When someone tells you that a destination is "about an hour away," they are basically using mileage as a unit of time (or using time as a substitute for what they intuitively estimate the mileage to be).
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While yes a light year is a measure of distance, I'd also argue it's got a unit of time baked into it in SOME circumstances.
Example: you look up in the sky and someone says that star is one light year away. If you want to find out how long it took the light you are seeing from that star to reach earth you need to know the speed of light and distance. One light year=5.879 trillion miles.
Divide that by speed of light (186,000 miles per second) and you get 31.5 million seconds which = 365 days = one year. So you would know the light you are seeing from that star originated 1 year ago which is the same as a light year distance.
So a light year already does the math for you IF you are interested in determining time in years relative to the speed of light.
I am going to put the bong down now....
Unrelated to the above, the term 10 year storm (x year storm) is used incorrectly all the time. You can have a 10 year storm hit every year, twice a month, etc. It merely represents the probability of a storm of a certain magnitude occurring on a yearly basis. So if you get hit with a 100 year storm tomorrow, don't think you are out of the woods for the rest of your life.
Not really. It is a distance. By your logic, a mile is a unit of time because if you know how fast you are driving, you can know how long it will take to get somewhere.
It's a distance, but if you want to covert it to a time in years relative to the speed of light, it's the same number. You can go through all the convesions to know that something 1 light year away takes 1 year to get there if you are traveling at the speed of light.
A better (theoretical) example would be assuming cars always travel 60 mph and the distance it takes you to go 60 miles in a car is called 'one car-hour'.
So a 'car-hour' is a unit of measure but it's relatively useless to me becasue I want to know what that is in a unit I am familair width. So i know a car-hour is equal to 60 miles in distance. I know the speed of the car is constantly 60 mph. So if something was 15 car-hours away, I would take (15*60)/60=15. So it would be 15 hours. Hence a car-hour distance is equal to the time relative to the speed of the car.
A mile by itself is distance and a light year compared to some other means of travel other than a light year is distance. But becasue a light year is based off the velocity of light, if you were to ever to ever compare a light year relative to the speed of light, the time component always equals the distance component.
So something that is, by definition, the distance which can be covered in a year, is also a measure of... a year? That's uh, something. Here we all are playing checkers while you're working on 4D chess.
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It's a distance, but if you want to covert it to a time in years relative to the speed of light, it's the same number. You can go through all the convesions to know that something 1 light year away takes 1 year to get there if you are traveling at the speed of light.
So something that is, by definition, the distance which can be covered in a year, is also a measure of... a year? That's uh, something. Here we all are playing checkers while you're working on 4D chess.
Nope. It's the measurement of distance that correlates to how fast light can travel. So if you are trying to measure time in terms of speed of light, the conversion from light year to year is 1:1.
Something 0.2 light years away would also take light 0.2 years to get there.
Nope. It's the measurement of distance that correlates to how fast light can travel. So if you are trying to measure time in terms of speed of light, the conversion from light year to year is 1:1.
Something 0.2 light years away would also take light 0.2 years to get there.
To BH28's point, for someone, such as a radar operator, for whom radar miles have practical significance, an expression of time in radar miles would also have immediate intuitive meaning as an indicator of distance.
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In comment 16127639 BH28 said:
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While yes a light year is a measure of distance, I'd also argue it's got a unit of time baked into it in SOME circumstances.
Example: you look up in the sky and someone says that star is one light year away. If you want to find out how long it took the light you are seeing from that star to reach earth you need to know the speed of light and distance. One light year=5.879 trillion miles.
Divide that by speed of light (186,000 miles per second) and you get 31.5 million seconds which = 365 days = one year. So you would know the light you are seeing from that star originated 1 year ago which is the same as a light year distance.
So a light year already does the math for you IF you are interested in determining time in years relative to the speed of light.
I am going to put the bong down now....
Unrelated to the above, the term 10 year storm (x year storm) is used incorrectly all the time. You can have a 10 year storm hit every year, twice a month, etc. It merely represents the probability of a storm of a certain magnitude occurring on a yearly basis. So if you get hit with a 100 year storm tomorrow, don't think you are out of the woods for the rest of your life.
Not really. It is a distance. By your logic, a mile is a unit of time because if you know how fast you are driving, you can know how long it will take to get somewhere.
It's a distance, but if you want to covert it to a time in years relative to the speed of light, it's the same number. You can go through all the convesions to know that something 1 light year away takes 1 year to get there if you are traveling at the speed of light.
A better (theoretical) example would be assuming cars always travel 60 mph and the distance it takes you to go 60 miles in a car is called 'one car-hour'.
So a 'car-hour' is a unit of measure but it's relatively useless to me becasue I want to know what that is in a unit I am familair width. So i know a car-hour is equal to 60 miles in distance. I know the speed of the car is constantly 60 mph. So if something was 15 car-hours away, I would take (15*60)/60=15. So it would be 15 hours. Hence a car-hour distance is equal to the time relative to the speed of the car.
A mile by itself is distance and a light year compared to some other means of travel other than a light year is distance. But becasue a light year is based off the velocity of light, if you were to ever to ever compare a light year relative to the speed of light, the time component always equals the distance component.
Light year is a distance. If a star is a light year away, and you are traveling half the speed of light, it will take you two years to get there. The fact that a light year is no different from a mile is shown by the fact that one can be converted to the other…1 light year = 5.8 x 10^12 miles.
A large number of miles is conveniently expressed as the time it takes light to go that far, because light travels quickly, but it is a distance.
I hope you understand Milton the difference between literal and figurative speech.
There are many forms of figurative speech including similes, metaphors, alliteration, onomatopoeia, personification, idioms, and maybe more.
When people say "that team is light year's better than that other team" it is not being used as a literal measure.
but one to indicate there is a large gap in talent between the two teams. When used in this manner it is not meant to indicate time or distance it's meant to indicate a large gap between two things since by all reasonable measures a light year is big.
There is also the concept of relativity, in your example of the dog bites without knowing a: population and b: number of dogs in those states it's impossible to truly be irate about that sentence (and being irate about it is unhealthy to begin with), because relatively speaking those other states may in fact not be far behind CA (relatively speaking). Most people can infer the important points from the discussion. CA is #1, TX and NY are 2 and 3. "Not far behind" by the author really was just meant to indicate those two states also had a significant # of dog bites. It was not used a mathematical precision device.
for god's sake you teach children, get a grip on yourself.
Something 0.2 light years away would also take light 0.2 years to get there.
I'm not sure what you mean by "nope," you're literally making my point. That you don't seem to realize that is telling.