Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Arbitrary measurements
The solar panels are about to produce hit a cumulative10,000 kilowatt hours of production since going online. For no very good reason, I'd like to hit this mark before the end of the year, and it's going to be close. The days are short, clouds are frequent, and we're lucky to get 6 or 7 kwh on a good day.
Thinking about this has impressed on me once again how arbitrary most measurements are. my nice round 10,000 kilowatt hours would be 13,404.83 if expressed in horsepower-hours which I'm not sure anything ever is expressed in.
Likewise, December 31 as the target for hitting 13,4.4.83 horsepower-hours is meaningful only because we have collectively made that the end point for one solar orbit in the Gregorian calendar. In the Hebrew calendar it's an ordinary, ho-hum 10th of Teveth , and would have been the 18th of December had we kept the Julian calendar. Excel thinks it's day 39082.
The pictures show another arbitrary measurement, although they do show that sometimes a gradual but qualitatively important change happens to coincide with some nice round numbers. The picture on the right was taken at more or less the 100th meridian (west) in Kansas, off I-70. "West of Hundred" was historically where the west began. It's flat (duh). Treeless, pretty much. Dry.
The picture on the left is at more or less the 98th meridian, also off I-70 in Kansas. Small hills. Somewhat more lush vegetation.
Neither 98 nor 100 is a boundary, in the sense of a sharp delineation. But something is different at 100.
Thinking about this has impressed on me once again how arbitrary most measurements are. my nice round 10,000 kilowatt hours would be 13,404.83 if expressed in horsepower-hours which I'm not sure anything ever is expressed in.
Likewise, December 31 as the target for hitting 13,4.4.83 horsepower-hours is meaningful only because we have collectively made that the end point for one solar orbit in the Gregorian calendar. In the Hebrew calendar it's an ordinary, ho-hum 10th of Teveth , and would have been the 18th of December had we kept the Julian calendar. Excel thinks it's day 39082.
The pictures show another arbitrary measurement, although they do show that sometimes a gradual but qualitatively important change happens to coincide with some nice round numbers. The picture on the right was taken at more or less the 100th meridian (west) in Kansas, off I-70. "West of Hundred" was historically where the west began. It's flat (duh). Treeless, pretty much. Dry.
The picture on the left is at more or less the 98th meridian, also off I-70 in Kansas. Small hills. Somewhat more lush vegetation.
Neither 98 nor 100 is a boundary, in the sense of a sharp delineation. But something is different at 100.
