Length of a Line...

@sonhouse said
@joe-shmo
So one cm could be just one barleycorn. 2.4 cm=1 inch.

Well I thought it was 2.54 cm to an inch. That would make 5 centimeters equal to 6 barleycorns (to within a few percent). Maybe the GM guys can sort that out so there's metric GM-barley where it's 5/6 cm long and Imperial GM-barley which is 1/3 inch long.

@DeepThought
Yep, I goofed, 25.4 mm/inch.

I once watched a programme which posed the age oldquestion "how long is a piece of string?"
The answer is it depends on how closely you observe it.
Under a microscope when you can see it isn't actually straight but composed of lot's of little bits like this on a really small scale /\/\/\ it obviously measures much longer

@venda said
I once watched a programme which posed the age oldquestion "how long is a piece of string?"
The answer is it depends on how closely you observe it.
Under a microscope when you can see it isn't actually straight but composed of lot's of little bits like this on a really small scale /\/\/\ it obviously measures much longer

Fun with fractals.

@eladar said
The brain is ready when it is ready.
Try this famous experiment. Find a wide glass cup and a narrow cup. Pour water from the wide cup into the narrow cup and ask which glass holds more water. Both cups must be clear to see the level of the water.

Piaget would argue that children are not ready for "conservation"
of volume until the "concrete operational stage" at age 7+