Better Units

[KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren He/Him]

3 hours ago, BigBadBagsworth said:

 

Still, you won’t really find other non-changing, non-arbitrary units for time, and a system needs units for time. Or maybe time between the Big Bang and the first star?

Hmm...

But we can't know when exactly that happened.

Half-lives, I think, are good enough.

And by non-arbitrary, I meant not human- or Earth-centric stuff, like Earth years or human feet.

[BigBadBagsworth He/him/his]

6 hours ago, KaladinsSenseOfHumorSpren said:

And by non-arbitrary, I meant not human- or Earth-centric stuff, like Earth years or human feet.

Got it.

But as true Sanderfans, we should start using base 16, like Scadrians do!

[bmcclure7]

On 10/16/2025 at 12:35 AM, KaladinsSenseOfHumorSpren said:

So, I've been thinking. The units we use, both metric and imperial, are all quite arbitrary.

So, just like everyone uses radians instead of degrees now, let's make some better units, defined by universal constants.

First up, the logical starting point. Lightspeed.

Next, some time units. I came up with the half-life of Radium-224 (~3.63 days), Technetium-99 has a half-life of 211100 years, and the time it'll take for the first stellar black hole to die from Hawking Radiation, which I won't list here.

Anyone got s'more?

Strongly disagree. You’re trying to make measurements based on science, which is great if you want to do scientific measurements but for practical use units it’s better to go off human experience and human environment then science hence the reason why I stand with imperial units. As they get their measurements based off of the human body. So it’s easy to picture the basic size in your head.

[CadCom he/him]

I know it's not units, but hear me out. Base12. 

It can also be intrinsicly counted on your hands. You can count up to 24 using your thumb as the placeholder, and the 2nd knuckle, 3rd knuckle, and finger tip on each remaining finger, totalling 12 on each hand (Alternatively, you can count the sections between each knuckle on each remaining finger.)

It factors more evenly. base10 factors into halves, 5ths, and 10ths. Base12 factors into halves, thirds, quarters, 6ths, and 12ths. Thirds are a very common factor in every day usage, and in base10 it's an irrational decimal. In base12 it would be a rational decimal.

It more naturally fits the superior system (By that I mean imperial)(This part is somewhat a joke. In current system, metric is nicer because of how well it fits the base10 system)
For example, 12 inches in foot, 12 tsp in quarter cup, 12 months, 12*2 hours in a day, 12 apostles, 12 hours on a clock,

Instead of Ones Place, tens place, hundreds place, etc...
We could do ones place, Dozens place, bundles place, chains place, etc. (these are based on my brief research into history of groups who used dozens to count, and could definitely be considered in more detail) 

I have a whole PPT I facetiously made to present to my sister after she argued we should completely redo the numeric system, but hreally she just changed the linguistics of the current number system. I'll try to edit a link to that in later when on a different device. 

On 10/18/2025 at 7:36 PM, BigBadBagsworth said:

 

Still, you won’t really find other non-changing, non-arbitrary units for time, and a system needs units for time. Or maybe time between the Big Bang and the first star?

TO be fair, I came up with mine independent of watching this, but a lot of the stuff is very very close.