When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

#463 - The missing leap year

Having determined gravity as the anchor point, the only remaining question became how to convert the numerical value of gravity into a unit of length.

And preferably, the result should remain consistent regardless of the weight of the vessel used for measurement.

The chattering among the engineering priests gradually ceased as they scratched their heads, wrinkled their noses, and scribbled on the ground, yet still couldn't devise a solution.

Horn smiled and interrupted their discussion: "In reality, natural phenomena unaffected by measuring instruments do exist."

"What is it?"

Horn didn't answer, but simply pointed towards the corner of the office building not far away.

There, on the flagstone and wooden floor, a grandfather clock, taller than a person, stood quietly against the wall.

"Ah, I understand," a former clockmaker exclaimed, slapping his forehead after a moment of confusion and thought. "A pendulum!"

"Hahahaha," Horn laughed heartily, finally hearing the answer he wanted, the same answer he and Shiloh had discussed.

Utilize the simple pendulum effect.

Although the Empire's civilization was in decline, the Ayr slowly discovered the simple pendulum effect, but hadn't yet summarized it into a principle.

But Horn knew that when a pendulum undergoes periodic motion, the time for one complete swing is related to the pendulum's length and the acceleration due to gravity, and independent of the amplitude and mass of the bob.

In other words, regardless of how heavy the bob is or how large the amplitude, the swing time only depends on the pendulum length and gravity.

Ignoring the small variations in gravity across different regions, as long as the time for one swing is standardized, the pendulum length must be the same.

No matter what kind of bob they use or what amplitude they set, as long as the time for one swing is consistent, the pendulum length will be consistent.

Although some error still exists, it's certainly much smaller than the errors of the current old system.

"Then it's simple," the clockmaker's voice gradually grew louder, but noticing Horn looking at him, he immediately lowered his voice.

"Oh, are you shy?" Horn beckoned him over. "What ideas do you have? Let me see."

Under the gaze of the other engineering priests, the clockmaker awkwardly stepped forward: "My humble opinion is, you've set a day at 24 hours, 86400 seconds.

We select a pendulum clock, and when it swings exactly 86400 times a day, we record its pendulum length and define it as a standard unit of length."

"We'll temporarily call it a 'Nema-mite,' transliterated from the ancient Ayr unit 'Leia,' and shorten it to 'meter,'" Horn continued along with his idea.

"But Your Grace, wouldn't that mean we have to wait a whole day each time?"

"Fool," the man's companion immediately retorted, "Can't you just compare it with a normal pendulum clock?"

"But what if there's no normal pendulum clock, or if the normal pendulum clock happens to be broken?"

"If there's no pendulum clock in the village, go to the town; if the pendulum clock in the town is broken, go to the city."

These people were among the smartest citizens, and many had even attended university, so they quickly grasped the concept and applied it to other situations.

"How about we adjust and unify the time in all cities in the future, adjusting it once a month, based on our Autumn Dusk Island labor clock?"

"This way, we can determine the length based on 24 hours on a certain day of the year on Autumn Dusk Island, and then update the standard ruler every year."

Seeing their excitement, Horn didn't join in.

Because he knew that this problem was far from as simple as it seemed.

This world has a festival similar to the winter solstice, and it has four seasons, which must mean that there's an angular deviation between the continent and the sun.

Then the time between the first sunrise and the second sunrise isn't necessarily exactly 24 hours; a few seconds of error is normal.

These small errors accumulate and become a very large error, which is the leap month.

So, according to common sense, this world should have leap years and common years.

But the strange thing is that in the ancient Seven Hills period and even in the early Ayr Empire, there were records of leap years.

But when the Empire moved east, the leap year miraculously disappeared.

Even scholars at the time ridiculed the leap year as a flaw in the ancient Ayr calendar, "Creating a non-existent day every four years."

As for what changes occurred in the calendar from the early Ayr Empire to the eastward migration of the Empire, Horn couldn't find any historical records.

Until now, no calendar has leap years.

What Horn couldn't understand the most was that, despite the absence of leap years, the agricultural seasons in the calendar weren't delayed at all.

If there were no leap years, the calendar should have been a mess after a thousand years.

But now the Church's published millennial calendar is still running normally.

Considering this is a world with magic and witches, Horn reasonably suspected whether magic caused these anomalies.

So he hoped that these engineering priests could cooperate with the wizards to start a real scientific research project.

They needed to take pendulum clocks to measure time in various places, to figure out whether the "disappeared leap year" had truly disappeared, or whether it had only disappeared from the calendar.

"Your Grace," while the others were discussing, the engineering priest who had just proposed measuring time to determine length quietly walked to Horn's side, "Now that the unit of length is determined, what about weight and volume?"

Horn looked at him: "What's your name?"

"Hoke Compagno," the engineering priest replied, bowing his head.

"Compagno? Is Robert your relative?" This was a rare surname, and Horn immediately thought of Robert Compagno of the White Mountain Hermitage. "Stand up straight and talk to me."

"He is my elder brother," Hoke quickly straightened his back. "But my magic power is too weak, my talent is very poor, and I usually make a living by carving and making water clocks for dignitaries.

Last year, I was reported by my peers as a wizard, so I went home to help Robert."

"Good, good boy, don't worry, here, your achievements won't be smaller than Robert's," Horn patted his butt and stood up, came to the group of arguing engineering priests.

"Silence!" the military police shouted in unison, and the priests immediately stopped talking.

"When we calculate the meter by pendulum length, we define one cubic meter as a cube with length, width, and height of one meter, and one cubic meter of water as one ton. In this way, we have units of measurement for length, volume, and weight," Horn explained to these priests.

"In the future, all markets must use standard weights and measures, and market officials must regularly check to prevent fraud and shortages based on weights and measures."

"This is more uncomfortable than killing those Ayr's parents…" someone said secretly, and the engineering priests couldn't help but chuckle.

But Sisi rubbed her head and questioned: "If we promote this so quickly, everyone will be confused all of a sudden, I'm afraid some people will take the opportunity to profit."

"It doesn't matter, we can run the metric system and the old system in parallel, anyway, the Papal Palace uses the metric system for taxation and business," Horn waved his hand and determined the future system of weights and measures.

"So, my task for you is to first test the pendulum length and time in various places, and after testing, establish a set of standard weights and measures molds as soon as possible.

The later adjustments should be completed before the autumn harvest next year as much as possible. You can determine the specific matters yourself in a meeting, and then give me a timetable and a milestone table.

The main person in charge of this mission is, um, my secretary monk Bonnerd and this Priest Hoke."