I actually met Admiral Grace Hopper as a midshipman at USNA in the very early eighties. She was giving a lecture on computer technology of the day. At the beginning of the lecture she passed out ~10” cuts of bell wire to all the attendees and proceeded to explain that in computing (at the time) performance and function were measured in nanoseconds, numbers that most people couldn’t grasp or visualize. But in one nanosecond, light (and electrons in circuits) travels about 10”. So now we had a reference of what a nanosecond was. That simple explanation stuck with me for the last 40 years. Today, we measure computer performance in picoseconds (1/1000 of a nanosecond).
That’s a great story.
Thank you for posting it!
I love word plays and visuals involving time and distance, electrons and light.
It’s an infinite treasure trove of learning material.
And that’s just with the basic knowledge that kids should be familiar with by the 9th grade.
I can’t even image what people like Grace Hopper would know.