Flat Earther, and other conspiracy theories. Are they mostly atheists?

[polymath257]

I flatter myself that I’m a reasonably bright fellow, but I can’t follow your maths. If I have five apples and five apples, I have ten apples, not 25 (and certainly not 625).

Could you please explain why meters can be expressed exponentially, but not apples, degrees Kelvin, grams or seconds?

Boru

Yes, you have 10 apples. What did I say that is different?
I also posted what the flat earther told me. Maybe you want to discuss the 25 and 625 with him.

For your question:
In the real world, a meter is a measure of distance. m^2 is a measure of area. m^3 is a measure of volume.
What's apples^2 in the real world?
What's kelvin^2 in the real world?
What's g^2 in the real world?
What's s^2 in the real world?

--Ferrocyanide

Very seldom do we have reason to multiply bunches of apples, although I will give an example where it happens below. But, we *do* have reason to multiply meters and meters--it gives us an area. We can even multiply meters by meters by meters to get a volume.

Seconds (s) are frequently multiplied by seconds, although typically it is divided by seconds twice in a row. So, a meter divided by a second is a measure of velocity and dividing by seconds again gives an acceleration. Doing it again gives something called the jerk.

Densities are often measured in mass per volume, in other words kg/m^3. But, for example, the units of energy are kg*m /s^2.

It is less common to have to multiply by kelvins or to divide by them twice, but it does happen. For example, if you are interested in how something expands on heating, the appropriate units would be m^3/K. If you want to know how that coefficient of expansion changes as the temeprature changes, that would give something like m^3/K^2.

Another situation is where you want to talk about entropy, which has units of energy/kelvin, or kg*m/(s^2 K). But, if you want to know the rate at which the entropy changes with temperature, that would be kg*m/(s^2 K^2).

As for apples, if you want to know a price per apple, that would be something like dollars/apple. But, if you want to know how that price changes for more apples, that would be something like dollars/apples^2.