tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 09 10:09:23 1994

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Re: the qelI'qam, was Re: Nonexistent words ...?

According to ...Paul:
> 
> To debunk a theory, the meter is NOT based on a portion of the Earth, it is,
> in fact, the distance that some particle travels through a vacuum in such-and-
> such time.  Unfortunately, I don't know what the particle is, or how much
> time they allow it to travel.  BUT.  I do know that the distance is always
> the same, and thus is a very good way to accurately record a unit of distance.

I'm pretty sure that the meter, as originally invented, was
related to the size of the earth. The particle measurement was
simply a more accurate measurement. They were measuring the
same meter that had already existed; they just lessened the
fudge factor. In other words, they took the earth size, then
divided it into a small enough fraction to give a handy size
near a yard long, and for a long time, they had a stick (okay,
it was a metal bar) "exactly" one meter long and if you wanted
to make sure something was exactly a meter long, you had to
hold it up next to this stick, or to a stick that had already
been measured by it.

Then some nitpickers said, "What happens when the stick gets
hot or cold or something, or if a sound wave distorts its shape
long enough to make an eensy weensy change in its length?" So
the scientists said, "Okay, okay, so we'll run a particle that
always travels at the same speed down the length of the stick
and when it gets to the end, we'll click the stop watch and say
that is how long a meter is. Since our clocks are more accurate
than our sticks, this meant that now everybody with an
appropriate particle and an appropriate stopwatch can measure a
meter more accurately than they could if they just had a stick
that had been measured against the standard stick.

Okay?

> I was watching ST:III a while back, and they mentioned Kellicams when they
> were getting ready to fire on the Enterprise around the Genesis planet.  They
> had gotten to within 500 kellicams before they decided to decloak.  Of course,
> Star Trek is ridiculous when it comes to scale, and they often mess that up,
> so it doesn't say much.  However, it was obvious that a kellicam is nothing
> like a "foot", or a "parsec".  I doubt it would be a mile, given the relative
> positions of the ships, so it could very well be something on the order of
> a meter...

I'm willing to think that a kelicam is really about two
kilometers, making it, oh, about a mile and a half or so. That
means the ship decloaked around 750 miles away from the target.
They never tell us how far the view screen is zoomed in, and
the exterior shots of two ships is set up much less for
authenticity than it is for trying to get both models on the
low-resolution screen at the same time, while still being
recognizable as ships. I mean, if they wanted to be realistic,
then most of the time you would not be able to see the ships at
all, SINCE, IN CASE YOU HAD NOT NOTICED, IT'S ***DARK*** OUT
THERE! Given the power and speed of these ships and their
weapons, I suspect that 750 miles is truely in your face,
breathing down your neck and generally crowding you out of your
neck of the sector.

> ..Paul
> 
charghwI'

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