Calculus tells you how curves work. Aqueducts are famous for their ability to be topologically flat. The math checks out
this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2026
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Flat on top. They tend to be quite curvy underneath, on account of all the arches.
Well yeah. I said they were topologically flat, not bottomologically flat ;)
Water go downhill, what more do you need to know?
You can say "fuck" on the Internet 🙄
That's fvcked up, man
Romans used the letter V to transcribe the sound U, then they changed that during the renaissanceand now we have both V and U.
The title is a joke about that
So where did the "v" sound come from?
The sound V was already present, they used the letter V with both sounds (if i am not wrong), idk where it came from
You can, but Romans couldn't.
Modern engineer would built an aquaduct in kilometers, not miles 😅
Roman engineers most probably never heard about miles too.
millia pasuum, literally "1,000 paces," was a common unit of measure in the empire, and the basis of various modern miles. It was slightly shorter than the modern statute mile.
Interesting. Never realised that "mile" just means "thousand" (though it is kinda obvious in retrospect). And since the modern mile is 1760 yards, a kilometre is more of a mile than the actual mile.
Yeah, assuming that a yard is meant to approximate the stride of an adult human, who's the Goliath-sized motherfucker with the 5' 3" stride who took a thousand steps and called that a mile?
Edit: Okay, I checked.
The furlong (meaning furrow length) was the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting. This was standardised to be exactly 40 rods or 10 chains.
An English mile is defined as 8 furlongs, 8 presumably being chosen because it divides by 2 and 4. What a cockamamie system of measurement.
Edit Again: Okay, I checked again.
The modern English word mile derives from Middle English myle and Old English mīl, which was cognate with all other Germanic terms for miles. These derived from the nominal ellipsis form of mīlle passus 'mile' or mīlia passuum 'miles', the Roman mile of one thousand paces.
A pace is a unit of length consisting either of one normal walking step, or of a double step, returning to the same foot.
This is all still very silly.
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Unless they're american, then it'll be built in freedom units.
Will be built in cheeseburgers and carrying stolen oil.
Interesting (scribbles on clipboard)...and for how many football fields would it span, exactly? And weigh how many Ford F150s?
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Between the censoring of "fuck" the usage of "anw" and the font changing inexplicably for the word "calculus" the meme's potential at humor was basically thrown in the garbage. If formatting and spelling makes you stumble that much trying to read it you lose comedic timing.
And how was your 50th, did the kids come out?
TikTok and YouTube censorship is ruining internet culture and memes.
What does anw mean?
Shorthand for anyway
Holy shit that is fuckin ridiculous. Type the damn words people. Never had more easy tools for typing than we have now.
Wym fam
there's a difference.
their engineering was amazing, but to compensate for lack of modern maths, they build with a much larger margin of safety and strength.
that's why some of those aqueducts last 2000 years.
no one wants to build infrastructure that lasts so long. we could build a bridge designed to last thousands of years, but it'll cost way way more, and the budget isn't unlimited.
I like the way someone described a similar retort:
Anyone can build a bridge that stays up and lasts a long time, but it takes a skilled engineer to build a bridge that just barely stays up a long time and minimizes costs and materials.
100% not a joke, that is the point.
Also our bridges are subjected to the insane forces of truck freight transportation. Who know how long they would last otherwise.
They were designed for that (usually), if you want a bridge to last multiple millenia you can design it for that. but it will probably add a couple zeroes at the end of the bill.
Romans had the 'advantage' of slave labour,
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like musical instruments, bridges are meant to be stressed. gotta drive over em with trucks or they'll shoot off into space
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but it'll cost way way more, and the budget isn't unlimited.
I wish things weren't always so short-sighted by default. I mean sometimes things evolve so maybe it's better to leave room for teardown and improvement or whatnot.
But it seems if you're not thinking in "quarterlies", infrastructure that's built once and simply maintained should cost a lot less in the long run.
But then I guess the contractors would dry up if they didn't have to come rebuild it a dozen times a decade. :p
Yhea, it is better to build infrastructure that lasts, but 2000 years?
that is a bit overkill, and more of a vanity project for billionaires which is more of a cry for help (by help I mean guillotine)
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Stop censoring mens, please?
I think we should just bad images with censored parts unless the censored part is the point.
Yeah, this is the internet, you can say bad words and fuck these US tech companies that want to stop everyone saying naughty words only because it makes them more money when we don't
It's an instant downvote for me.
It's free engagement.
Their tools still used calculus, just indirectly and without their understanding.
Importantly, I replace dy/dx with ∆y/∆x when I need a really quick sanity check for simple calculations.
Yup, we're stupid, but at least we have the metric system ¯_(ツ)_/¯
You dropped this: \
Thanks! I lose it all the time when I copy the kaomoji into Lemmy (--_--)
Back then you used to have to have a college degree to be able to multiply.
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