Krypton Memes

The meter: simple, elegant, one syllable. Then you check the actual definition and it's suddenly "the distance traveled by light in 1/299,792,458 of a second" or "1,650,763.73 wavelengths of krypton-86 radiation." Classic science move—take something straightforward and define it using increasingly obscure measurements that require three more textbooks to understand. Every unit in physics is secretly a Russian nesting doll of complexity. And they wonder why students switch majors.