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Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

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Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#451

Post by qubidt »

cubefox wrote: post #438
dguest wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out you can define it from looking at radioactive decay (or any other interaction governed by the weak force). Feynman famously had a short description that ended with the punch line > Suppose, after lots of communication you finally can go into space and meet your alien counterpart. If, as you approach one another, the alien extends its left hand to shake, watch out! He’s made of antimatter! because even th…

That claim needs to be substantiated.

The assertion that it is possible or the attribution to Feynman? Scientific American [1] references Feynman's 4th Messenger lecture at Cornell: "Symmetry in Physical Law" (1964) [2] [3]

[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/degrees-of-freedom/gala...

[2] https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/messenger.html

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7K1kXeK-tY

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#452

Post by bryanlarsen »

HideousKojima wrote: post #176
yafbum wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in the US and other places that have a grid system as their main road planning principle and route naming principle? In Europe, where roads tend to follow the terrain more, I've not really heard this.

The US doesn't really have a (consistent) grid system outside of cities, with the notable exception of Utah (due to planning efforts by the Mormon pioneers). And even in cities it can be a mess. For example Seattle grew from three different smaller areas that all planned their roads to be parallel to the coast. The problem is the coast isn't in a straight line so as they grew and combined into a single city it create…

Much of the inner US was divided by the Homestead Acts of the 1860's into square mile (640 acre) sections, 160 acre quarters, and then further into forty's. cf "back forty". These are all square.

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#453

Post by ethbr0 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #448
antognini wrote: post #89

It's interesting to compare how different professions handle the ambiguity in left/right. In the maritime world they went with an approach at one extreme, where they just use two completely separate words, "port" and "starboard." (Though that's far from the only case where there's a special word for something on a boat.) At the other extreme you have the medical profession where the first thing you learn in medical s…

I suppose it has to do with how many frames of reference you're juggling in a task/profession. With boats, others mentioned that wind provides its own frame, and there are separate words still for "left" and "right" in that frame. Then there's space, where it gets even more fun, as the relevant frames - the ship, the orbit (or the "centre of gravity" of everything pulling on you) - are completely independent. That is…

> With boats, others mentioned that wind provides its own frame, and there are separate words still for "left" and "right" in that frame.

There's windward (towards/upwind) and leeward (away/downwind).

Are there left and right too?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windward_and_leeward

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#454

Post by copperx »

narrator wrote: post #267
jjav wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though that's far from the only case where there's a special word for something on a boat. Understatement of the week... pretty much everything on a boat has a different word for it. Often for practical reasons, sometimes purely traditional reasons. It is nice because it binds one to nautical tradition leading back centuries/millenia.

One interesting thing about middle ages technologies, like boats, is that the words in the different romance languages for things invented in this era are very different from each other. For example, in Spanish boat words like port and starboard are totally different[1]. Other examples of middle ages words that are very different: windmill = molino, wheelbarrow = carretilla. Words that refer to older things have more…

Really? in French, starboard is tribord, and in Spanish, it's estribor. Port is bâbord, and in Spanish, it's babor.

How are they different?

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#456

Post by ethbr0 »

marvin wrote: post #417
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheese is an interesting one - I would expect Spanish to share the word with French and Italian but it’s actually closer to English and Dutch. French fromage Italian formagio Spanish queso English cheese Dutch kaas Languages are so weird :)

In the case of cheese, I've had a long-running discussion with French extended family regarding exactly what the words refer to. Norwegian 'cheese' = 'ost', and we refer to the brown cheese produced by boiling and solidifying the left-over whey fluid from cheese production as 'brunost'; 'brown cheese'. This product is important in cultures where food security and calories are held at a premium. My French relatives ho…

> the dictionary translation of words does not capture somewhat-subtle but sometimes important distinctions between words

Good point. I have yet to see a dictionary that also provides delineation with similar-but-different words and describes the differences.

That'd be very useful for language learners, as colloquial use often eschews definition in favor of socially common convention. I.e. "That word does mean that, but you would never use it in that way"

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#457

Post by dguest »

cubefox wrote: post #438
dguest wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out you can define it from looking at radioactive decay (or any other interaction governed by the weak force). Feynman famously had a short description that ended with the punch line > Suppose, after lots of communication you finally can go into space and meet your alien counterpart. If, as you approach one another, the alien extends its left hand to shake, watch out! He’s made of antimatter! because even th…

That claim needs to be substantiated.

Which claim? The full transcript of the Feynman story is available online [1], you can search for "martian" to get right to the story. It's presented in the context of explaining CP symmetry, which says that physics is conserved under a parity (mirror reflection) plus charge inversion (matter -> antimatter) transformation. Of course it's only approximate [2].

I got the quote slightly differently from what is recorded on the caltech sight, the one they have is

> So if our Martian is made of antimatter and we give him instructions to make this “right” handed model like us, it will, of course, come out the other way around. What would happen when, after much conversation back and forth, we each have taught the other to make space ships and we meet halfway in empty space? We have instructed each other on our traditions, and so forth, and the two of us come rushing out to shake hands. Well, if he puts out his left hand, watch out!

[1]: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_52.html

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP_violation

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#458

Post by _fizz_buzz_ »

dguest wrote: post #392
somenameforme wrote: post #316

There's kind of a fun brain teaser related to this. Imagine you're speaking to an entirely alien species in another dimension. And you're trying to describe "left" to them. It's impossible. I say it's a brain teaser only because this sounds highly improbable at first. Forwards and backwards can be described, and even up/down if we assume basic fundamental rules remain the same. Yet left and right? It seems impossible…

It turns out you can define it from looking at radioactive decay (or any other interaction governed by the weak force). Feynman famously had a short description that ended with the punch line > Suppose, after lots of communication you finally can go into space and meet your alien counterpart. If, as you approach one another, the alien extends its left hand to shake, watch out! He’s made of antimatter! because even th…

I think it should also be possible with electro magnetism. By first defining the sign convention for electron flow and then deriving left hand and right hand rules of magnetism or something like that. It’s a bit tricky to explain the sign convention, but I think if one sticks with the movement of elementary particles, it should work.

Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

#459

Post by yobbo »

mjlee wrote: post #298
walthamstow wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some examples? I am English but I know nothing about the maritime world, so I likely know the words as slang/vernacular terms but not what they mean on a ship.

There are some we use in tech every day. The word log (as in logbook/log file) comes from a literal log that was thrown overboard to estimate the speed of the ship for navigation. After that, there's some fun slang that's nautical. Chockablock comes from the blocks (pulleys) getting jammed on each other when multiple ropes are being worked on. "Not enough room to swing a cat" refers to the Cat o' Nine Tails which was…

Not quite; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_log

Not obvious what it originally meant.

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