Walking around the lake.
I was doing a walk and talk with mrshill around the lake this cold, Wintery Monday morning (I can do that now, with it being school holidays and all), shooting the breeze ya know and the subject turned to the mass of water -
“Isn’t it convenient that 1 litre of water weighs (almost) exactly 1 kilogram?,” I said.
“And isn’t it convenient that the volume of 1 litre is equal to 10 cubic centimetres?”
“And then there’s temperature - it’s very convenient that the temperature for water to freeze is exactly 0 degrees celsius and, to boil, 100 degrees celsius.”
Everything is terribly convenient. I am not religious at all but this reminded me of the scripture teacher at the school I work at (side-note - in NSW public schools, scripture teachers are volunteers and not qualified teachers, thus a qualified teacher needs to be present during scripture lessons so I hear a bit about what gets said in the classes) who says there are a lot of things in the world we live in that are just too convenient and that the only reasonable explanation for them is that there is a higher power out there in control.
But then I took a step back and thought, “Hang on a minute.” Metric units are not ‘convenient’ at all. These systems were designed for a reason. We need units of measurement so we can compare lengths, areas, masses, volumes, etc.
My understanding is that we (‘we’ being some clever French person) would have started with length as the first unit of measurement - then we would have taken 10 cubic centimetres of water and called it 1 litre - units for measuring liquid and its smaller parts were called mL. Then they would have said that it weighs 1 kilogram and - voila - we had mass. Break it down in to smaller parts for grams and bigger parts for tonnes. When the water freezes it’s 0 degrees and when it boils it’s 100 - units to record temperature.
This all says a lot about the importance of water. Funny the things you think of when you’re curious and you’re out walking. Everyone should walk more!