.split() Qeustion

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 16 Aug 2013 05:27:49 +0000, Dave Angel wrote:

> I figure it just under a foot.  I once attended a lecture by Grace
> Hopper where she handed out "nanoseconds," pieces of wire about a foot
> long.  

Is that based on the speed of light in a vacuum, speed of light in 
copper, speed of electron drift in copper, speed of sound in copper? Or 
perhaps it was aluminium wire? :-)

> She said that the beaurocrats were always asking how much is a
> nanosecond, and couldn't imagine what a billionth was like.  So she gave
> them something physical.

Hmmm, given when Grace Hopper was active in the navy, I would have 
thought that the simplest way to imagine a billionth would be "one dollar 
is a billionth of the US National Debt" or "one person is a billionth of 
the world's population". None of which really helps the typical person 
visualise a billionth, since the typical person can't really visualise a 
billion people or a billion dollars.

I think a simple analogy that works is: the width of a single human hair 
is a billionth of 100 metres (or yards, for Americans). People can 
visualise 100 metres, and they can visualise a hair. No need to relate 
things to the speed of light, which most people cannot visualise, or the 
circumference of the earth, or the distance from New York to Tokyo, or 
from Venus to Mars at aphelion :-)



-- 
Steven