Talk:Length/Archive 1

Old comments about deleting/transwiki as dictionary definition
This article belongs to wiktionary or no? -- Taku 21:55, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

no LirQ —The preceding comment was added on 22:06, 27 September 2003.

—The preceding vote was copied/moved from the old Votes for deletion on 12:35, 12 October 2003 by MyRedDice.
 * Delete Length - Dictionary entry. WINAD. User:200.165.208.90
 * Keep. wshun 04:13, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep, article convinced me even though at first I thought it an obvious delete. Fuzheado 07:28, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep, it has more info than a dictionary entry. Evil saltine 08:07, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep. - Patrick 16:18, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep - interesting article. Tiles 00:04, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * Del - I like the article but it is nothing but usage. Move it to wiktionary obviously. -- Taku
 * Keep. It's somewhat interesting as it is and could esily grow a bit. -- BCorr ¤ &#1041;&#1088;&#1072;&#1081;&#1077;&#1085; 14:04, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep. Hard to see exactly how it would get linked to, but it is an interesting article - Marshman 19:01, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep. -- Jake 08:53, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep


 * Del - It's a terrible article, which only serves to confuse the term length. It contains no information that isn't in the term curve. Cederal. —The preceding comment was added on 15:06, 5 May 2004.
 * Keep. It definitely needs work, but Cederal is horribly wrong.  Cederal seems ignorant of physics.  In that field, length is one of the fundamental "dimensions" (that term being understood as in dimensional analysis). Michael Hardy 16:24, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Meaning of length in physics
I consider myself a physicist, and as such, I must claim that the term length in physics is the same as in mathematics. If you want to discuss use of language, physicists do use the term length in dimensional analysis, but this is only a burrowed use from it's mathematical meaning. This article claims that "Length is not an intrinsic property of anything", while it's obviously an intrinsic property of curves in metric spaces. Just because relativity says our world is not metric (and has only a pseudo-metrics) doesn't mean anything... -User:Cederal 18:24, 5 May 2004 (GMT) (sorry, I don't know the transformation to UTC)

Correct?
The article states "an object's width is less than its length". Is this considered to be correct? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SaltNpepper (talk • contribs) 11:15, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Length / Lenght
I'm a little confused about the spelling of this word, Length is probably correct, but I have also seen Lenght out there on the net. Is it the "spoken language" version or is it just a lot of people who misspell it? It's probably easy for all native english speakers out there but for someone like me, it can get a little confusing sometimes. Lizzzard 19:49, 28 January 2007 (UTC) P.S. Hope this isn't way out of the guidelines of the discussion pages D.S.


 * Yes, those are typos/misspellings. —Centrx→talk &bull; 20:14, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposed WikiProject
Right now the content related to the various articles relating to measurement seems to be rather indifferently handled. This is not good, because at least 45 or so are of a great deal of importance to Wikipedia, and are even regarded as Vital articles. On that basis, I am proposing a new project at WikiProject Council/Proposals to work with these articles, and the others that relate to the concepts of measurement. Any and all input in the proposed project, including indications of willingness to contribute to its work, would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your attention. John Carter 20:49, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Ambigous definition
The article defines length like this: "Length is the long dimension of any object." This is not clear, infact:
 * if by "long dimension of an object" it is meant "the longest dimension of an object", the definition is not true, as there are objects whose width is longer than their length (for example the prism in the picture of the article)
 * otherwise, what is meant by "long dimension of an object"? If it is defined as "length's dimension" then we have a circular definition, which is no good

I propose: "Length is the measure of the sideways dimension of an object". Now clearly "sideways" is still ambigous, but nonetheless I find it a better (more intuitive) definition —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.54.124.68 (talk) 19:14, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Or...
What about the direction of travel? In cases where an object is simply much larger in one dimension than it is in the other two we tend to call this dimension length. But we also tend to use 'length' as the measure of the dimension of travel - wire, road, channel etc. We travel along the path.

Also, the first diagram demonstrates why the definition given is wrong - one wouldn't refer to the prisms depth as its width - in this case length is interchangeable with height, but not width (or breadth, as one may say) as it is in the diagram. And in the diagram depth is given as width, which is just wrong. Width is on the x-axis - from side to side. Depth is the z-axis. Height is the y-axis. If a prism is nearly a cube and someone asked you 'how long is it?' you might think them a little strange. One might ask the length of a side - as if you were travelling in one dimension from one point to another. It really is to do with direction of travel.

86.134.22.207 (talk) 09:20, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Picture
In pictures, there are only width and height. There are no length... the picture in the article seems.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.142.143.7 (talk) 15:07, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

emotional reaction
like 129.247.247.238 (talk) 13:14, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

deletions
I just deleted two sentences.

As early as the middle of the tenth century it is believed that the Saxon king Edgar kept a "yardstick" at Winchester as the official standard of measurement. A traditional tale tells the story of Henry I (1100–1135) who decreed that the yard should be "the distance from the tip of the King's nose to the end of his outstretched thumb".

Searching on Google while working on the yard article, I kept running into these sentences, which means many other people are seeing them too. One's person's "traditional tale" is another person's misinformation. Zyxwv99 (talk) 15:12, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Link to Dimension
The first sentence of this article says "length is the most extended dimension of an object". The linked article is unhelpful because it defines "dimension" as a number of coordinates, such as 2 or 3. Size might be a better link. JonH (talk) 20:47, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Arc/path length
The most glaring omission in this article is that it seems to assume that length is always in a straight line. There's a see-also to arc length, which for some reason is a different article from path length, but I would expect to find those concepts treated here. (There's an argument that different meanings of the same word should be treated in different articles, but I don't think length-in-a-straight-line is a separate enough meaning for a whole article.)

It's a little convoluted figuring out the right plan for this. My current thinking is that (1) arc length and path length should be merged, and then (2) there should be a section of this article summarizing the merged article, with a main link to the merged article. But it might not be totally unreasonable to merge both articles here, and leave just a single article, which still would not be very long. Arguably the graph-theory meaning should still be a separate article, called path length (graph theory) or some such. --Trovatore (talk) 05:22, 19 February 2020 (UTC)


 * A related omission is the non-mention of general relativity. I will add it to see also for now.Dondervogel 2 (talk) 08:11, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes but what you added adds nothing to the article. I have a PhD (not in Physics) and I don't understand a) what your sentence means and b) what it actually adds to the article for the lay reader. Matt-thepie (talk) 09:27, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
 * General relativity is founded on the concept of curved space-time. That is why it seems relevant to Trovatore's remark. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 10:02, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Math
Train a IS 4 m50 cm long ,train b is 590 cm long, train c IS 7 m 40 cm long and train de is 990 cm long which train is thé longest  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 102.114.7.214 (talk) 09:09, 18 November 2021 (UTC)