Distance doesn&#x27;t use indexing at all, because measures are not indexes, so it doesn&#x27;t make sense to say &quot;if distances used 1-based indexing&quot;.<p>OTOH, for something physical that actually <i>is</i> indexing, or at least closely analogous to it, we could ask &quot;what if principal quantum numbers used 1-based indexing&quot;. But, then, the answer would be &quot;things would look exactly like they do now, because it already does.&quot;