Bortle Scale

The clarity of the night sky. A low number means clear, black and amazing stars. Higher numbers mean gradually more urban environments with increasing light pollution. At 9 you’ll barely spot a star being pretty much in Piccadilly Circus or Times Square.

More detail needed? John Bortle, Light Pollution And Astronomy: The Bortle Dark-Sky Scale, Sky and Telescope, July 18 2006.

HT: Paul Lewis

Published 30 Dec 2015

A weekly sketch by email

Learn something new in a sketch each Sunday

Sketchplanations in a book! I think you'll love Big Ideas Little Pictures

Prefer to listen?
Try the podcast

Like Sketchplanations?
Support me on Patreon

Keep exploring

Word spectrum

The frog boil metaphor

Atmospheric perspective

The real shape of a crossing

The tragedy of the commons

A busy street showing how the pollution varies in different locations compared to a back street which is much cleaner

Pollution is highly localized: take the back streets

A word spectrum highlights different aspects of a concept from one extreme to another. By arranging words on a spectrum, we can see their subtle differences and nuances. For example, a word spectrum of happiness might range from "Miserable" on one side to "Ecstatic" on the other, passing through "Gloomy", "Content", and "Happy" along the way. Or a word spectrum of tiredness might be: Asleep - Drowsy - Groggy - Awake - Alert - Energised It's not a science, and there's a fair amount of latitude for people to place different words in different positions. Looking at many spectrums, it strikes me that some writers excel at selecting specific and perhaps more intriguing words such as "scrumptious" or "mouth-watering" over the more common "delicious." Roald Dahl often had his characters "guzzle" instead of "eat hungrily," for example. I became curious about word spectrums when I realised that my understanding of the spectrum of approval was different from that of many of my American friends. In British English, "quite" is often used to mean "a bit less than," but in the U.S., I found it was more commonly used to mean "a lot" or "very." So, my British English word spectrum of approval would be: OK - Quite good - Good - Excellent While the word spectrum of approval for many of my U.S. friends might be: OK - Good - Quite good - Excellent It left me confused several times before I figured it out. For other variations in interpretation, such as where you might put "awesome", there's an excellent table as a Guide for U.S. students interpreting feedback from faculty trained in the U.K. (and vice versa). At times, it really matters what someone means with a descriptive word. In the "intelligence" trade "words of estimative probability" relate to specific odds meant by certain terms. For instance, if an attack is "highly likely," just how likely is it? If something is "almost certainly an airfield," how certain is that? Clearly, the choice and interpretation of these terms can be very significant. For a fascinating insight on this, see CIA analyst Sherman Kent's previously classified report Words of Estimative Probability (pdf). Other research has studied individual differences in people's perceptions of probability—and created some fun graphics showing the results. Estimative probability is also critical in medicine. If exact numbers aren't shared, how frequent is a side effect that occurs "rarely"? Specific guides have been created listing associated probabilities for terms such as "likely", "frequent", "occasional" and "rare". A reader also shared with me a classic chocolate advert of Fry's five boys, with the face of a boy moving from: desperation, pacification, expectation, acclamation and the realisation "it's Fry's". More word spectrums, including those illustrated here: Size: tiny - small - medium - large - huge - gigantic Frequency: never - rarely - occasionally - sometimes - often - always Talk volume: whisper - murmur - talk - shout - yell - scream Intelligence: stupid - dim - average - bright - brilliant - genius Tastiness: disgusting - bland - tasty - delicious Smell: foul - stinky - scented - sweet More fun scales and spectrums: Fahrenheit and Celsius The Bortle scale The fun scale Solar system scale The Scoville scale The square-cube law Do a 2x2…A word spectrum highlights different aspects of a concept from one extreme to another. By arranging words on a spectrum, we can see their subtle differences and nuances. For example, a word spectrum of happiness might range from "Miserable" on one side to "Ecstatic" on the other, passing through "Gloomy", "Content", and "Happy" along the way. Or a word spectrum of tiredness might be: Asleep - Drowsy - Groggy - Awake - Alert - Energised It's not a science, and there's a fair amount of latitude for people to place different words in different positions. Looking at many spectrums, it strikes me that some writers excel at selecting specific and perhaps more intriguing words such as "scrumptious" or "mouth-watering" over the more common "delicious." Roald Dahl often had his characters "guzzle" instead of "eat hungrily," for example. I became curious about word spectrums when I realised that my understanding of the spectrum of approval was different from that of many of my American friends. In British English, "quite" is often used to mean "a bit less than," but in the U.S., I found it was more commonly used to mean "a lot" or "very." So, my British English word spectrum of approval would be: OK - Quite good - Good - Excellent While the word spectrum of approval for many of my U.S. friends might be: OK - Good - Quite good - Excellent It left me confused several times before I figured it out. For other variations in interpretation, such as where you might put "awesome", there's an excellent table as a Guide for U.S. students interpreting feedback from faculty trained in the U.K. (and vice versa). At times, it really matters what someone means with a descriptive word. In the "intelligence" trade "words of estimative probability" relate to specific odds meant by certain terms. For instance, if an attack is "highly likely," just how likely is it? If something is "almost certainly an airfield," how certain is that? Clearly, the choice and interpretation of these terms can be very significant. For a fascinating insight on this, see CIA analyst Sherman Kent's previously classified report Words of Estimative Probability (pdf). Other research has studied individual differences in people's perceptions of probability—and created some fun graphics showing the results. Estimative probability is also critical in medicine. If exact numbers aren't shared, how frequent is a side effect that occurs "rarely"? Specific guides have been created listing associated probabilities for terms such as "likely", "frequent", "occasional" and "rare". A reader also shared with me a classic chocolate advert of Fry's five boys, with the face of a boy moving from: desperation, pacification, expectation, acclamation and the realisation "it's Fry's". More word spectrums, including those illustrated here: Size: tiny - small - medium - large - huge - gigantic Frequency: never - rarely - occasionally - sometimes - often - always Talk volume: whisper - murmur - talk - shout - yell - scream Intelligence: stupid - dim - average - bright - brilliant - genius Tastiness: disgusting - bland - tasty - delicious Smell: foul - stinky - scented - sweet More fun scales and spectrums: Fahrenheit and Celsius The Bortle scale The fun scale Solar system scale The Scoville scale The square-cube law Do a 2x2

Newer

RRandom

Older