Well, for starters, that depends on which way you're looking at the earth.
this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
-26 points (21.7% liked)
Asklemmy
43803 readers
798 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Because who the hell knows by heart which way the earth turns
I mean, anyone who hikes often or likes astronomy. It's kind of important for navigation and orientation to know where the sun will rise and set.
Are you telling me you don't ever imagine yourself on a huge ball spinning towards the sun in the morning?
I'm glad someone else at least understands how incredulous I am.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Some of us say anticlockwise instead
At this point I'll take it lol
Because in everyday life we can see the rotation of the clock hands but not the rotation of the earth.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Because clocks are intuitive, the earth's rotation is not. We've agreed long ago that clocks spin to the right, and that convention has continued to this day. Analog clocks are now a regular occurrence everywhere in modern society. Up is 12, down is 6, Clock spins to the right. Ezpz.
The earth's rotation, while a constant, isn't easy to intuit. Depending on your frame of reference the earth spins to the right, to the left, ahead of you or behind you, or some combination of these local cardinal directions. In addition, there is no objective "up" in space. The most common map projections only orient north as "up" because of eurocentric bias when choosing such an orientation.
So nah, earthwise makes no sense for angular velocity unless you also want to mandate north = up
load more comments
(5 replies)
The word you want is "widdershins".
Sunwise and widdershins! Only heard the term when I met some witches. IRL witches! It's a thing.
Yeah, it is honestly
My friend's grandfather used to bet on horse racing all the time, and horses would go counterclockwise around the track no matter what track it was, so he'd say horsewise whenever he wanted to say counterclockwise.
That dude's my hero
Thank you. That's what this whole post is based on.
Why does Big Ben get to decide which arbitrary way I say left turning?
Clocks simply followed the direction of movement from the sundial (as seen in the Northern hemisphere).
Nothing to do with "Big Ben" [sic].
The big Ben remark was a joke because people say big whatever controls things. Like big brother controlls the government. Big phama controls drugs. Well big clock controls what we call left and right turning thing. Big Ben is a big clock.
Though you might be able to get the pun but sorry. Misjudged your intelligence
Misjudged your intelligence
Some civility would be nice.
Fuck yo couch
Maybe I'm wrong, but maybe we should also say right and counterright. Tight and countertight. Open and counteropen.
Maybe we should say a lot of things in more logical ways. Unfortunately, language evolves naturally over time and that comes with these kind of oddities
My dude, I was joking. I'm trying to evolve the language I guess.
Because you then have anti-earthwise, which just sounds like a climate disaster, or humanity itself.
Or, we could still use clockwise. Which is what I was thinking.
Hereβs whatβll really bake your noodle. The north end of a magnet points north which means that the north magnetic pole is actually the South Pole of the Earthβs magnet.
view more: next βΊ