Bizarre Units

polygonum · 2013-03-21T17:19:35+00:00

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?

Mar 21, 2013 31 Replies

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Andy Champ 13 years ago

The density of a whale is near-as-dammit 1, or it couldn't swim.

Oh, sorry, that's in kg/litre, not whales per cubic football pitch...

Andy

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Frank Erskine 13 years ago

See

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and

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dennis 13 years ago

Then it would be a rook.

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polygonum 13 years ago

It would be a huge chessboard...

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Bob Eager 13 years ago

The one I like (haven't looked to see if it's there) is a fairly good approximation to 1 inch/second:

1 attoparsec per microfortnight

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Bill Wright 13 years ago

Well close up I expect it looks blue.

Bill

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Chris J Dixon 13 years ago

This weather, most of them.

Chris

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Mark Bluemel 13 years ago

That may be answered here - I can't remember off-hand...

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Richard 13 years ago

20ish elephants and BIG?

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polygonum 13 years ago

How much auto transmission fluid per blue whale?

(Yes - I know they changed...)

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Onetap 13 years ago

Is that Indian or African elephants?

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polygonum 13 years ago

Or the Flores dwarf elephant:

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Why do we call them pitches? Aren't most of them grass rather than tar?

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