New Scientist video round-up - August 8, 2008

Watch a new robotic arm powered by gyroscopes: http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn14490?DCMP=youtube

See the new Olympic Swimming Center in Beijing that was inspired by soap bubbles and footage of the hottest water on Earth: http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn14456?DCMP=youtube

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• hottest
• water
• Earth
• critical
• robotic
• arm
• gyroscope
• Olympic
• swimming
• pool
• bubbles
• new
• scientist
• newscientist

[CurryCurry]

very interesting.

[LittleTruckingBozo]

Did she say "Here in the vomit comet?"

[Leafshinoby]

YEH 4,5/5 in votes, Fukings kill me already!! I just saw those three videos seperately from each other!! That ugly man in the start would prob. like some creddit !!, Why couldn't they make this video first!! It seem like their only spamming videos and want people to hate that narrator !!

[daalsij]

HAHA OMG I KNOW AY

I HATE THAT NARRATOR

[misfits748]

He's bald.

[amozoness6]

PLEASE KILL THAT NARRATOR!

Good gracious, her voice is incredibly annoying.

[ubuntututorials]

I like metric because it works in units of 1, 10, 100, etc. while in Imperial you have to remember lots of different measurements - there are 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 220 yards in a furlong, 8 furlongs in a mile, etc. And the metre is defined as the distance in which light travels in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

[mcresearch]

You can't just make this stuff up you know. The metric system was devised precisely to get away from arbitrary and uncoordinated measurement systems. Centi refers to one hundredth part, meter refers to the original 'measure'. Come on, do you think it's right to misrepresent facts so you can make a point?

People without rulers may have used their fingers etc. but that doesn't mean that the system was based on body measurements.

[Avalikia]

No, it was based on a *miscalculated* measure of the distance between the equator and north pole (a finger was used to measure a centimeter until it was standarized). Which makes it almost as arbitrary as the imperial system and much less user-friendly because there are fewer choices in exactly how to measure something because each measure differs by an order of magnitude while imperial offers intermediate options. And it's every bit as standardized today as metric is.

[mcresearch]

The imperial system was based on arbitrary body measurements. It is a mixture of systems adapted over the centuries. It is fully implemented nowadays only in the US. Most English speaking countries have converted partially or completely to metric.

The metric system was originally based on the earth. one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator was deemed to be one measure (metre in French). It was also standardized using water. A 1 cm cube of water weighs a gram.

[Avalikia]

Metric, of course. Or at least it used to be. In more recent times the exact measurements have been standardized so they no longer reflect how they used to be measured in either imperial or metric (which is why a foot is so much longer than a real foot - unless you're a freak).

[mcresearch]

Which system is based on the width of a finger?