this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2025
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Science Memes

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Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

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Science isn't a filing cabinet of facts, it's a conversation. For example, a photo of an eel or other localized wildlife counts because most people never see one, and wonder is the first step of inquiry. A car meme counts if it makes you curious about what's under the bonnet. If you want to talk about something you noticed in the world, chances are someone else wants to talk about it too.

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yeah everything is probably made of like, idk, earth water, fire and air or something idrk (mander.xyz)
submitted 9 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] it_depends_man@lemmy.world 57 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

The thing that always gets me about the Renaissance is Galileo:

He did those experiments with things falling down? Measuring speed?

Yeah. Without a clock.

The theory for how to build those came later, based on what Galileo did.

[–] MajorMajormajormajor@lemmy.ca 44 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Man, being a cop must have sucked before they invented time.

Officer: do you know how fast you were going?

Lord: No, do you?

Officer grumbles: you're free to go.

Carriage pulls away

Officer ClocknTime: For now, for now.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 months ago

Alright, I'm stealing this one for a Pathfinder session

[–] markovs_gun@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago

Clocks existed then though. The oldest clocktower in Europe that still exists was built over 100 years before Galileo was born, and time measurement existed longer than that. You can measure time fairly accurately with water clocks which had been known for thousands of years before Galileo. Not having "modern" pendulum clocks yet doesn't mean that they didn't have any way to measure time. Even without water clocks you can get decently reliable measurements of time with rhythmic chants (think how today we might say "one Mississippi, two Mississippi, etc.). Early alchemical recipes often include time measurements in chanting a specific prayer or passage a certain number of times during a specific step. Sure you're not going to get milisecond level accuracy this way but you don't really need that for a lot of things. Hero of Alexandria built mechanical automata 1500 years before Galileo using pulleys and weights as timers. Time measurement not only existed before pendulum clocks, it was pretty decent.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 4 points 9 months ago

Couldn't even measure it in Mississippis because they hadn't discovered it yet.