2888: US Survey Foot

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US Survey Foot

Title text: Subway refuses to answer my questions about whether it's an International Footlong or a US Survey Footlong. A milligram of sandwich is at stake!

Explanation

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This comic pokes fun at a difference in length of the US Survey Foot and the International Foot.

Transcript

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Discussion

Breaking news- the comic just got changed to 8,000.016TenGolf MathHacker (talk) 17:28, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

As it should ... I did the math, and the difference between the two measurements over 8000 miles comes out to be 25.7249999 meters – which works out to be 0.0159842 of a mile.  This is, of course, why it appears that the team and Black Hat are on the shores of the same pond, with only the boulder(?) preventing the team from being able to see Black Hat. RAGBRAIvet (talk) 10:25, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

So no one has caught on to the fact that the imagery of last panel appears to be a continuation of the second-to-last panel? 172.71.155.18 (talk) 19:02, 1 February 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Too obvious to mention explicitly. Although it does place his location at far less than 8000 miles'-worth of accumulated error. Consider it a figurative continuation. 172.69.43.170 21:23, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

He isn't 8,000 away from the NIST team. The NIST team is 8,000 miles from Cueball, Black Hat is 8,000.016 away from Cueball. The distance between Black Hat and NIST is 0.016 miles. :) i.e. same lake. NiceGuy1 (talk) 06:45, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

"8000 miles'-worth of accumulated error" isn't the full 8000(.016) miles, if that was what you were trying to clarify. Its the ±0.016 miles.

Also, current explanation says "25.749 metres, being unusually close compared to what the comic seems to depict", yet (depending upon how contiguous or uncontiguous the pond(s), rock(s) and presumably the same woodland is (it's drawn as not only inter-panel-border difference in distance, but may be not be very much more, perhaps less than a full further tween-panel would depict) I get the impression that he is actually closer than the 25m discrepancy. (As in the NIST team leader just needs to say "spread out!" and someone on the team almost instantly wanders into him by default.) 162.158.74.49 11:47, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

(cntd) There was an edit more in agreement with me (that they were close). But suggested definitely frame-border close, which I (I hope they don't mind) hedged to it not much more than (probably) frame-border close. To cover the actually unknown exact relation between the obviously related neighbouring scenes. 162.158.74.69 22:17, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

UK & Ireland Survey Foot

Until the British Ordnance Survey adopted the metre they used a foot of 0.304 800 749 1 metres. RogerWTurner (talk) 19:34, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

So US Miles, UK Miles, and "International" "Imperial" Miles are all different?172.69.194.202 12:10, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

US and UK/Commonwealth "statute miles" are 1609.344 metres (exactly, since 1959). Though based upon shared origin of 5280 (English) feet. That's probably as International as you can get. (5280*610nm is 3.2208mm of difference if you get mixed up.) But it took a while to even get to "roughly that exact".

The Roman Mile was 5000 (Roman) feet, approx 1480m, but led also to the Italian Mile of 1852m-ish by various convolutions, whilst the Chinese 'Mile' is officially 500m. Even within Britain, the Scots Mile was 1807m-ish (as seen between some historic roadside mileposts) and the Welsh version was once around 6,170m (even more historic/obsolete).

Even nautical miles are 'wrong' against what they should be, but are nonetheless standardised to their own separate international standard. (You could say "they're in a league of their own", but then leagues can be anything from 2.2km to 6.6km, at least, depending on where/when you are!) You can probably look all this up, if you really want. ;) 172.71.242.204 12:54, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

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There are (or used to be) states that specify U.S. survey measure for various things. Others that specify the international definition. Still others that just leave it undefined. Seems normal.

Although it IS a small difference, the survey grid in the U.S. and thus the property lines for a large portion of the U.S. are done with the older definition and a few reference longi- and latitudes. That could make property lines suddenly shift, so the U.S. survey foot may never fully die. I even made sure it's in my app accurately.

162.158.159.236 19:39, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Someone should mention who NIST is (National Institute of Standards and Technology). I'm only familiar with them because of their work with information systems.

And maybe something about the absurdity of NIST having "SEAL Team"-like agents that can capture someone violating their standard. Barmar (talk) 07:20, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

The explanation doesn't mention the NIST helicopters (which have no precedent), but somehow doubts the US would send a SEAL team where they have no jurisdiction (which does). 198.41.242.118 14:00, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

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No Ingenuity tribute comic? :/ 162.158.102.64 21:07, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps he couldn't make his original attempt fly? 172.69.43.170 21:24, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I love XKCD, but it isn't often they make me laugh out loud. The sheer absurdity of this, and that Randall picked up on it did. 172.68.144.147 21:05, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I measured the 2 feet that I have readily available. None of them come close to either the International or US Survey foot. And most worrying, the difference between them is significantly more than 610nm.... 172.71.99.49 11:19, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

You sure you measured correctly? The proper direction is lengthwise... 172.68.138.166 15:47, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Please consult a healthcare professional immediately. Laser813 (talk) 20:23, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

You are non-standard. You will be eliminated. SDSpivey (talk) 17:45, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I would think 0.016 miles would be close enough for the NIST team to be like "There he is!", :) I love how it looks like they're both on the same lake, what's with "being unusually close compared to what the comic seems to depict", to me it's DEPICTING them pretty close! NiceGuy1 (talk) 06:45, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I know that this is a semantically annoying nit to pick, but the overall theme of the comic is about the difference between the two original measurements, not how much .016 can make in measurements. So why is decimal variance the punchline? 1245 UTC, 6 Feb 2024. 172.70.34.122 12:47, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

It's the punchline from the absurdity that two entirely separate units existed for which even over a great distance of 42.2 million feet, the variance would be only 84 feet. I had projects come to a screeching halt when the survey/international issue made stuff be wrong by less than 2'. It ends up that property owners get very protective of their property lines being exact. 172.70.126.49 (talk) 21:02, 16 February 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Prior to 1959 the UK foot was defined by a physical object (unlike the US one which was allready defined based on the meter), so all conversation to meter where purely empirical. Hence the change was simply a measurement refinement / redefinition, akin to the multiple redefinitions of the meter and kilogram. The UK didn't have the difference at the survoyer scale issue, as UK survoyers had allready adapted metric back then.

India did have a survey foot, but this has been retired since then.--172.70.246.85 17:30, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Interesting! What was it called? Z1mp0st0rz (talk) 15:48, 16 April 2024 (UTC)