Units of measurement in a non earth centric universe.

[Vertigo]

I think having seen everyone's pretty unanimous opinions it confirms what I thought, totally takes the reader out of the story. I may one day go into further detail for my own satisfaction but it would in no way drive the story forward and therefore shall not appear in it.

Venusian Broon. From what I recall from my degree I believe they were going to use plancks constant to define the kilogram, that was some time ago though. A quick google shows there's now another method under consideration. Now they're looking at two methods I expect there to be a huge bun fight before we get a new definition. I will miss being able to go to paris and see the Actual Kilogram though, although it will still be there and always have a place in my heart.

I find definition of units fascinating and that's why I've fallen into this trap.

If ever you do decide to go into this in more depth I wrote a program a while back that allows me to do formula calculations in any combination of units you choose. So you can calculate Newton's law of universal gravitation F = G * (Ma * Mb) / r^2 using, for example, force in pound-force, one mass in kilograms and the other in pounds and the distance between the masses in say light minutes. It does this by converting them all to SI units before performing the calculation.

Then, just for fun, I allowed the user to create their own units by defining the base units in terms of SI units and the rest in multiples. So your tip might be defined as 1.23456 seconds but then all other times are defined in terms of your tip so a top is ten tips etc. It was kind of fun but also allowed a bit of a consistency check, so that you could confirm that someone taking 20 trips to travel the 224 wiggles between city A and city B was not actually break the speed of light!

 

[Mirannan]

^ this.

Basically all stories in the fantasy genre, and many in the sci-fi genre, are implicitly translated into a format readers can understand. Obviously all the aliens don't speak english, and distant future humans probably have hugely different dialects, words, idioms, etc. Units might be different, pronunciation might be different, and common tools and things may have come to new names. You could just drop all this on the readers as an exercise in hyper-realistic world building, but it doesn't make for very good storytelling.

Given that stories are implicitly translated anyway, I'd say only break that pattern when it adds to the story or the ambience/tone... e.g., an idiom that came about after world war 3 might create a cool tone and imply a particular backstory... but if the name of a "chair" changed to "butt holster" sometime in 2300CE I don't see that adding enough that it is worth making the reader learn it. I suspect all new distance units don't add too much either.

As far as physics is concerned, yeah your constants go haywire, but your basic equations don't change all that much. Units cancel and correspond, so it doesn't have much of an effect on anything in that sense. Coming up with all new names for units would be a project.

Regarding your "butt holster" example, I think it's worth noting that some other languages have a rather less twee attitude to calling things by what they do than does English. My favourite example is German's "bustenhalter".

 

[Kissmequick]

So

Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, years and so on. These are of course all very earth centric. No in the process of world building I have tried to create a new measurement system that has is not based on the rotation of any planet or its orbital period.

Check

My universe is essentially this one but many thousands of years in the future. As such the basic physical laws of this universe are the same as my universe.

Check

so far so normal

Currently a second is defined as 9x10^9 transitional periods (to 1 sig fig) between the two hyperfine energy levels of a ground state caesium 133 atom. Clearly caesium is the best element to use to define a unit of time, primarily due to its electron shell configuration. Of course the second comes originally from the subdivision of an hour, and ultimately day.

er....what? Does the reader need to know this?

Whatever units you use (and this applies to fantasy too) they need to be organic to the world/universe you have created AND be clear to the reader. Only use if necessary in other words. So, if you neeed to use use Tip, Tap, Top they also need to be clear, from context, the first time they are used that they are short/medium/long spans of time. Your reader will make the adjustment in their heads, and carry on. As simple as "I won't be a tip!" or "that'll take tops of time we don't have" etc[/quote][/quote][/quote][/QUOTE]

 

[Vertigo]

Another thing is to bear in mind why we have broken the day into 24 hours and the hour into 60 minutes etc. rather than using factors of ten like you have proposed; it's because they are easily divisible whereas factors of ten are typically very indivisible. That convenience tends to outweigh the mathematical inconvenience in everyday use.

 

[farntfar]

I've noticed in various Star Treks etc the Klingons or Ferengi or those almost hippopotomousy ones in Voyager will say " You have 20 farnswargles to decide!" and then count down 20 seconds.
So I agree. Use other unit names if you like, but keep the units to our norms. (Or he'll get upset. )

 

[Toby Frost]

I don't mean to be rude, but this feels to me like the dictionary definition of unnecessary world-building. I'm pretty sure that in the novel of Nightfall, Asimov said that he wasn't going to invent new names for equivalents as he felt it made the book needlessly harder to read.

The only instance I can think of where it would be important is in a fantasy setting where days and months refer to real-world things that don't exist in the setting: Thursday referring to Thor, for instance. The standard procedure there seems to be to give the day/month/etc a new name that sounds very much like the original one. This seems a bit awkward to me, but I'm not sure how else you would do it.

 

[farntfar]

Tolkien went to great lengths to define all his days of the week, month names etc ** in the prologue and appendices, and then to say that for the stories themselves he would use our names and measures.

** because that sort of thing was very important to him.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Another thing is to bear in mind why we have broken the day into 24 hours and the hour into 60 minutes etc. rather than using factors of ten like you have proposed; it's because they are easily divisible whereas factors of ten are typically very indivisible. That convenience tends to outweigh the mathematical inconvenience in everyday use.

I blame the Babylonians.

 

[Kissmequick]

Tolkien went to great lengths to define all his days of the week, month names etc ** in the prologue and appendices, and then to say that for the stories themselves he would use our names and measures.

** because that sort of thing was very important to him.

There's a reason they are not in the main story...and they are pretty clear within the story as well, as to how long measurements are
(at least so you can come to a fair resemblance - the reader does not need to know exactly. This goes for many things. If the exactness becomes a plot point things might change I suppose)

 

[RX-79G]

I don't think you actually need to state numbers for distance and time very often. There are plenty of pretty adjectives one can use before resorting to data.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I don't think you actually need to state numbers for distance and time very often. There are plenty of pretty adjectives one can use before resorting to data.

I agree. 'We'll meet tomorrow' rather than 'We'll meet on Friday'. 'Sunrise' (or maybe 'sunsrise') rather than '6am'. 'I was waiting ages' rather than ' I waited for 6 hours'.

It's important to suspend the readers disbelief, so an alien world is unlikely to have a Tuesday or a February, but it's also important not to lose sight of the fact that this is a novel and not a science journal.

 

[bugsbane]

I know this is an old thread...

but there's nothing magical about base 10 either.

 

[JimC]

Nor the length of the day either. Thank the moon for that.

 

[AllanR]

but it's also important not to lose sight of the fact that this is a novel and not a science journal.

or that you live in Turkmenistan. 2002 renaming of Turkmen months and days of week - Wikipedia

In a role playing game I run, I had tried to change the names of the days and months etc to reflect the local religion. The players would have non of that.

 

[Ursa major]

but if the name of a "chair" changed to "butt holster"

I should have mentioned this earlier, but using "butt holster" for a chair is pants....

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

or that you live in Turkmenistan. 2002 renaming of Turkmen months and days of week - Wikipedia

In a role playing game I run, I had tried to change the names of the days and months etc to reflect the local religion. The players would have non of that.

Star Trek has used "star date" since the first season. In the first season is was completely arbitrary. By TNG they came up with a convoluted "system" which, when studied closely, appears even more arbitrary than not having a system.

On planet Earth today there are several calendars in use - Thailand and Iran use unique calendars for example.
But when one changes words, maybe one should start with, "to what end?" Frankly I found the use of Modern calendar Month names in Tolkien a bit off-putting. Instead of April 13, perhaps the middle of spring would be enough.

 

[Vertigo]

but there's nothing magical about base 10 either.

In fact base ten was 'imposed on us' by our number of fingers but base 12 would have been far better and easier to do maths in had we just had 6 fingers on each hand.

Nor the length of the day either. Thank the moon for that.

Do you possibly mean the length of a month? The moon has nothing to do with the length of a day.

 

[JimC]

"Do you possibly mean the length of a month? The moon has nothing to do with the length of a day".

I assume you're making a joke.
Tidal drag.
For example, length of the day in the late Cretaceous was about 23.5 hours.
Tidal drag is also the reason that radius of the Moon's orbit increases at a rate of approximately 1.5 inch per year - which means that the length of the month is increasing too, and also the length of the lunar day.

As you probably know, this is also the reason the moon looked about 10% larger to the naked eye a billion years ago than it does now.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

This doesn't really speak to what to call the unit of measure, but Circadian Rhythm might be the actual length (when translated) for the space length of an official day/cycle. That is, if we are talking about humans living out in space then the length of the day may be based on Circadian Rhythm. The official length is 24 hours, which is slightly different than an average Earth day.

One of the earlier studies resulted in slightly more than an average Earth day...
On July 16, 1962, French geologist Michel Siffre entered a darkened cave, where he planned to remain for two months...on average he settled into a sleep/wake cycle that was 24 hours and 30 minutes long...

This explorer discovered human time warp by living in a cave

On July 16, 1962, French geologist Michel Siffre entered a darkened cave, where he planned to remain for two months. Tracking the days according to his sleep patterns (one night’s sleep equals one …

nypost.com

 

[Omits]

My years are cycles and days are spins (of the planet).