this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2025
349 points (99.2% liked)

Science Memes

16551 readers
1274 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 42 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] sevon@lemmy.kde.social 84 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] Pazuzu@midwest.social 32 points 2 months ago

metric is great until you need to do anything practical with it like converting cricket chirps to degrees ^/s^

[–] ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works 60 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Assuming one spherical cricket in a vacuum

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 26 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

You can't hear a cricket chirp in a vacuum.

The motor is too loud.

[–] C8r9VwDUTeY3ZufQRYvq@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 months ago

Ignoring air resistance?

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 39 points 2 months ago (2 children)

...or count the chirps in 8 seconds and add 4.

Why am I taking 25seconds and dividing by 3? Accuracy?

[–] TheMetaleek@sh.itjust.works 39 points 2 months ago (1 children)

My guess would be better approximation as you avoid a "fluke", as 8 second is a very short time where nothing could easily happen even with crickets being present

[–] yimby@lemmy.ca 19 points 2 months ago

I'm just bothered they chose divide by 3, instead of 16 seconds divide by 2 which is wayyy easier

[–] NuraShiny@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago

If you count only for 8 seconds, it will be inaccurate, you need to count for 8 and 1/3 seconds!

[–] essell@lemmy.world 36 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Wow.

It's zero degrees here in June.

Weird.

[–] Zron@lemmy.world 23 points 2 months ago (2 children)

How did you hear negative chirps?

Can I learn this power?

[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 months ago
[–] psud@aussie.zone -2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Using the metric version you can get zero with no chirps. The method doesn't work at all for the current temperature though, you can't get -1°C any way

[–] a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Nope,, 0 / 3 = 0 -> 0 + 4 = 4°C

Division/Multiplication always goes before Addition/Subtraction.

[–] Zron@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

That’s but how math works, doesn’t matter if you use the American or metric formula

[–] A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl 2 points 2 months ago

Hello fellow southernhemispherian, how does it feel bring safe from nuclear winter?

[–] DudeImMacGyver@kbin.earth 21 points 2 months ago (2 children)

How do you count just one cricket's chirps? There are usually tons of them.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 6 points 2 months ago

Everyone counts their own crickets and then you add the results together.

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago

Count faster.

[–] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Glad to know it's America and crickets that find fahrenheit more convenient for temperature.

[–] Today@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think that's how we got fahrenheit.

[–] kurwa@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Actually it was originally based on the freezing temperature of a brine and human body temperature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit

[–] appelkooskonfyt@lemm.ee 7 points 2 months ago

No I'm pretty sure it was crickets.

[–] HollowNaught@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Ah, so 32° is when an unknown concentration of human brine freezes, and 98.6° is the average human temperature

What am I even reading any more

[–] Macallan@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I think the brine probably froze at 0° F, which ended up correlating to 32° F for regular water. And the body temperature at 100° F ended up correlating to 212° F for water to boil. That's the way I understand it anyway.

[–] HollowNaught@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Fahrenheit temperature scale, scale based on 32° for the freezing point of water and 212° for the boiling point of water, the interval between the two being divided into 180 equal parts. The 18th-century physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit originally took as the zero of his scale the temperature of an equal ice-salt mixture and selected the values of 30° and 90° for the freezing point of water and normal body temperature, respectively; these later were revised to 32° and 96°, but the final scale required an adjustment to 98.6° for the latter value.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What the hell was the brine that it required it to be 32° below the freezing point of water? Even salt water would have frozen by that point.

[–] Macallan@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Far fewer people know that 0° and 100° in Fahrenheit also correspond to specific real-world values. 0°F corresponds to a temperature where a brine is made of equal parts ice, water, and ammonium chloride. Such a brine, interestingly, is a frigorific mixture, meaning that it stabilizes to a specific temperature regardless of the temperature that each component started at. Thus, it makes for a really nice laboratory-stable definition of a temperature. Similarly, 100°F was initially set at "blood heat" temperature, or the human body temperature. While not super precise, it was a fairly stable value. As good as anything in the early 1700s.

Source from a quick Google search: https://gregable.com/2014/06/temperature-scales.html

[–] psud@aussie.zone 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Really it was "find something that is different to the reseller scales"

[–] kurwa@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

It was actually based on an existing scale called the Rømer scale

[–] Widdershins@lemmy.world 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I feel like parentheses don't belong in explaining math if they aren't used appropriately.

[–] LanguageIsCool@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

30 chirps + (added to) 40 = 70

[–] NuraShiny@hexbear.net 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I guess Summer's over, it's 4 degrees celsius where I currently am.

[–] propter_hog@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] NuraShiny@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How did you count negative chirps?

[–] propter_hog@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Negative occurrences are imaginary numbers, and reading about crickets caused me to imagine hearing them.

[–] NuraShiny@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago

...I will accept this explanation.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 1 points 2 months ago

How many crickets did you imagine? I want to make sure the maths works out.

[–] MyFriendGodzilla@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

But what species is the cricket?

[–] not_woody_shaw@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

I was expecting some kind of Duckworth-Lewis formula.

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 1 points 2 months ago

Test or One-Day?