Talk:3041: Unit Circle

First 162.158.175.72 23:00, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

This would actually be so helpful for my geometry class right now 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 23:06, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Are you saying you have problem with abstract thinking? Why should matter if the unit circle had radius 1 yard, 1 foot, 1 meter or 1 lightsecond? -- Hkmaly (talk) 23:12, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

I don’t like having things defined as “x” and like to have exact measurements. The diagram just looks cleaner to me that way 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 23:38, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

There's nothing stopping you from considering non-dimensional lengths to be whatever unit you want. If you just write in, for example, "cm" after any linear dimensions, and corresponding units for areas and volumes, that's fine.162.158.158.169 14:24, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

I prefer units of light-nanoseconds or the metric version parnsecs (don't think about it too hard :P) -- SammyChips (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~) SammyChips 23:58, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

I like square acrminutes per steradian 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 02:38, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Please sign off with ~~~~, or change your signature to include a link to either your talk page or user page. Thank you! 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 01:25, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

I did sign with ~~~~, but the option for treating my signature as plain text was enabled. SammyChips (talk) 15:57, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

SammyChips, if that is supposed to be Parallax nano-seconds, you should understand that that is probably more like a Giga-Parsec. The parsec is the distance at which an object appears to move one second of arc when the Earth moves halfway around its orbit. (though I'm not sure which orientation.) Divad27182 (talk) 03:34, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

I told you not to think too hard for that very reason :P It's actually parsec-nanosecond per year, but in a nod to the recent comics dealing with unit cancelation and making up personal scientific jargon, I collapsed it into its own unit. For those who didn't get it, a light-nanosecond is pretty close to a foot, and the "parnsec" is pretty close to a meter. SammyChips 15:50, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

You Americans will use anything but the metric system!172.70.58.45 16:30, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

parallax giga-seconds?Lordpishky (talk) 19:20, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

My Millennium Falcon gets 14 parsecs to the Kessel Run, and that’s the way I likes it! 172.68.186.34 06:26, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm going to take all these desires for weird units with a barn-megaparsec of nackle. 172.69.195.160 07:00, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

yo Tori, this might help you with geometry too ;) Caliban (talk) 11:14, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

I’ve watched that video before-it’s really cool and it’s one of my favorite videos ever 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 16:10, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Are "they" also searching for Apollo's doubled altar? Divad27182 (talk) 03:22, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

I guess the correct wording is that $\pi$ is a trancendent number. Some irrational numbers e.g. $\sqrt{2}$ can be constructed by compass and ruler. 172.68.185.165 (talk) 07:12, 23 January 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

To be more precise, constructable irrational numbers are those that can be obtained through taking square roots, even repeatedly. Transcendental numbers are out, but so are things like cube roots. Note also that the fact that there are no "absolute units" of length is a quirk of Euclidean geometry -- in, say, hyperbolic world, a unit circle like this could actually work. 172.68.213.153 09:10, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Watch out you don't make that unit circle too big, or the square's vertices might stretch out to infinity and ignite the atmosphere! SammyChips (talk) 16:14, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Didn't the unit kilogram lose some of it's mass? It may be working if something similar happened to this unit circle. 172.69.214.117 15:43, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

It probably gains mass. (Hard to tell, when the reference mass is the mass that may be changing... But it's what tends to be observed from how the IPK copies change. Could be the addition of small amounts of hydrogen onto the surface, or even mercury vapour escaping from the themometers/etc that tend to be around the reference masses. 172.70.58.6 21:43, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

The unit circle has a diameter of 2 units by definition, as a circle's diameter is twice its radius. In this comic, the diameter of the circle is 89 pixels, measured from the center of the outline on one side to the center of the outline on the other side. This implies that at the scale of this scene, the "unit" is 44.5 pixels. Cueball is 201 pixels tall, making him 4.5 "units" tall. Are characters' relative heights consistent enough in xkcd for this to be meaningful? --Tepples (talk) 18:22, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

The only true unit of length is ~1.616*10^(-35) meters. Whether you want that to be the circle's radius or diameter would be a matter of convention, although it might help to point out that the Schwarzchild "radius" of a unit mass is two length units, which makes me think of a diameter instead. 172.68.245.206 20:00, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm surprised that this explanation doesn't cover the joke inherent in "dimensional analysts": This is obviously a reference to dimensional analysis, the process of cancelling out units in long chains (and the topic of 3038: Uncanceled Units). Trimeta (talk) 01:52, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Specifically, the comic assumes, while many terms of measurements are called units, that there is an actual measurement of length or distance in space which is correctly called one unit. That's going to cause a little confusion. Unit also is used to refer to things besides measurements, including a small apartment or business space, and a certain part of a male human body. I don't think that measurements of that are going to be consistent, particularly if self-reported. Robert Carnegie 172.70.162.162 09:06, 24 January 2025 (UTC)