Bizarre Units

Mar 21, 2013 31 Replies

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polygonum 13 years ago

There was a thread recently about bizarre units.

Today our crappy local arse-wipe freebie quotes:

"During the 2012/13 programme alone 178 roads were treated. The material used weighed the equivalent of 5,825 elephants or 285 blue whales and covers an area of 90 football pitches, officials said."

I can't help wondering how you spread the blue whales across the pitches

- and that is once you have dragged them to the nearly-the-furthest-away-from-the-sea-you-can-get location.

That is 74.67948717948718 elephants per road. Or 20.43859649122807 elephants per blue whale.

How many blue whales in a Wales?

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Alan Braggins 13 years ago

About 3000000 football pitches to a Wales, so I make it 9500000 blue whales to cover Wales.

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Richard 13 years ago

To what depth?

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The Medway Handyman 13 years ago

If you put one whale on the first square of a chessboard.....

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The Medway Handyman 13 years ago

"Up to 100%" as a lot of adverts now claim.

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The Medway Handyman 13 years ago

And how much would they weigh?

Altogether now....

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Halmyre 13 years ago

or 9.5 megawhales.

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Alan Braggins 13 years ago

To the same depth as the road treatment in polygonum's freebie. I assumed that was obvious. But they give its weight in elephants/whales, not its volume, so we can't find what that depth is.

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Brian Gaff 13 years ago

Is the minimum depth a standing or laid down elephant, are you standing the whales on their heads or laying them flat and do the overlap?

Brian

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Richard 13 years ago

At least 1% is assumed to be horse.

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polygonum 13 years ago

Sea horse?

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Richard 13 years ago

Too finely minced.

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Jim K 13 years ago

Ah yes - it's Polygonad's tight Farrahs that cause that.....

Jim K

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polygonum 13 years ago

The male seahorse is equipped with a brood pouch on the ventral, or front-facing, side of the tail. When mating, the female seahorse deposits up to 1,500 eggs in the male's pouch. The male carries the eggs for 9 to 45 days until the seahorses emerge fully developed, but very small.

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Richard 13 years ago

Desperately trying to not see that.

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Bill Wright 13 years ago

Our local paper had a large article (advert really I think) about a firm called Persimmon Homes. But the spellchecker had altered it throughout to Permission Homes.

Bill

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The Medway Handyman 13 years ago

How many football fields would they cover?

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Nightjar 13 years ago

I wonder how many people have any idea of how much a blue whale weighs, or even looks like close up?

Colin Bignell

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damduck-egg 13 years ago

There was at one time a department store in Southampton called Plummers. A local freebie which was so notorious for spelling mistakes that it was essential communal reading in the pub the evening it was placed on the bar once carried an Advert for a dress which had come from the store. It read "Plumbers black evening dress,decorated with sequins, size 8 ". Being in the atmosphere of the pub we rang the seller and asked if it had suitable pockets for spanners and a basin wrench. They were not amused.

G.Harman

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Adam Funk 13 years ago

Plumbers' cleavage?

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