8 ms·
What's with the obsession for football fields as a unit of distance?
by dn3500 4y ago
What's with the obsession for football fields as a unit of distance?
- collegeburner 4y agomost ppl can visualize a football field as a unit of large distance because it's a large thing we've all stood on and regularly see. so it kinda makes sense and is easier to visualize than a mile. good "for scale". what's with the hate on measuring things in football fields, aside from some hand-waving about it being "unscientific"? like yeah don't use it in a research paper but i don't see a problem with it.
- howling 4y agoFootball field doesn't have a fixed length and can be anywhere between 90m and 120m. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_pitch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_pitch
- collegeburner 4y agoi said football field, not pitch. they're measured in yards and all come to 100 of them. glad to know soccer fields vary in length since that means they're obviously not a good unit of measure and there won't be any confusion :)
- mc32 4y agoTo use a pun, these are ballpark figures to give people a general idea, not an exact measure. Also about as heavy as a midsized car. Just gives people a general idea. Akin to stadia.
- function_seven 4y agoUsing “ballpark figure” to explain “football field” is my favorite thing today. I never quibble with these types of comparisons, except for Libraries of Congress when trying to convey the amount of data something can hold. I have no idea how large the LoC is. My touchstone for data capacity is MP3s (128k/48kHz, of course :) As far as football fields goes, I’d think it works best because gridirons and pitches are roughly the same size. Almost everyone has had experience with at least one of those, right?
- jfoutz 4y agoWell, yes. but in the game the US calls football, (hand egg?) the field is fixed size. What, pretty much, everybody else calls football the field is not fixed size.
- z9znz 4y ago> hand egg That's one BIG egg! Perhaps the sport should be called Prolate Spheroid Carry.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago90m and 120m are close enough for communicating an approximate impression of size, which is what the football field "unit" is for. People aren't going to recall either of these sizes precisely anyway, nor accurately estimate the size of anything else about this big. Not without training in distance estimation anyway.
- ok_dad 4y agoWay to live in your little bubble there. I, for one, wasn’t sure if you meant American football or what the rest of the world calls it, and even then I have zero idea how big a field is. To me and probably millions or billions of other people, you might as well have told us it’s as long as an Atlantic right whale or something.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- autoexec 4y ago> To me and probably millions or billions of other people, you might as well have told us it’s as long as an Atlantic right whale or something. I'm pretty sure it's the blue whale that comes closest to 100 yards Looked it up (Wikipedia) : "Adult North Atlantic right whales average 13–16 m (43–52 ft) in length" "the longest scientifically measured individual blue whale was 30 meters (98 ft) from rostrum tip to tail notch." You're going to need at least three blue whales to get close, I'd throw in a north atlantic right just to be safe.
- mastersummoner 4y agoAmerican here, and I have effectively zero instinctive idea of how large a football field is.
- whateveracct 4y ago"Bubble" is a bit silly. It's completely normal in the entire United States to get how big a football field is. Say it in any context and people will not look at you funny. If you're from Europe, sure I get that you might not get it. Although a soccer field is about the same size. If you're American, maybe you're just sensitive about not like sports? A visceral discomfort around sports is pretty common amongst tech people (now that's a "bubble.")
- ok_dad 4y agoNah I just don’t know anything about sports, but every sports bro in America thinks their hobby is universal because of their sports bubbles. People like me gravitate away from sports bubbles, sure, but only because that’s basically all sports bros talk about.
- autoexec 4y ago> it's a large thing we've all stood on Have we? Is it really that common if you aren't a player/cheerleader? I have stood on an American football field only once and that's because I was helping out a friend capture audio of the game. I've certainly seen them on TV, but that doesn't really give a great sense of distance. I've seen the Statue of Liberty on TV a lot and that's about a 100 yards too. I think that people keep complaining about it because it's clearly a flawed way to measure something, but people still keep using it because we don't really have something better to replace it with. We just don't have enough things around us that are measured reliably and consistently I guess.
- cjonas 4y agoPretty sure just about every highschool in the developed world has a "football" field
- EdwardDiego 4y agoSure. But I never really just went and stood on one for funsies.
- autoexec 4y agoI'm glad it wasn't just me! Although maybe we both somehow missed out on a quintessential high school experience and all the cool kids were hanging out in the middle of a field for some reason.
- concordDance 4y agoWhich might be 50m long.
- collegeburner 4y agono, all football fields are 100 yards long. i think that comes in around 90 meters for y'all euros.
- lamontcg 4y ago
- EdwardDiego 4y agoWhat size is an American football field? I'm only familiar with football and rugby union fields.
- mauvehaus 4y agoA football pitch and an American football field are close enough in size to be interchangeable for estimating or descriptive purposes. We aren't measuring the height of the bullet to the nearest mm, after all.
- collegeburner 4y ago100 yards which is probably like 90 meters in euro?
- teeray 4y agoMany people have been on a football field, so they have internalized its bigness. It’s the same thing as comparing smaller objects to a dollar bill, or a quarter.
- lrem 4y agoAccording to a quick Google search the typical sizes of football fields I've grown up with were either 32m or 44m long. Pro league football fields are anywhere between 100m and 120m long. However if I add "American" to the query, I see 90m and 110m being "the" answer. So, which is it? :)
- dudeinjapan 4y agoWhat's with the obsession for meters?
- Doxin 4y agoIt fits neatly with a bunch of other measurements, avoiding the need for awkward conversion factors. E.g. a cubic meter is 1000 liters exactly. A cubic yard is 168.18 gallons approximately. But that's neither here nor there. Using football fields as unit of measurement is odd. You don't see metric countries resorting to using soccer pitches as unit of measurement.
- lgeorget 4y agoI've actually seen it quite regularly in vulgarised science pieces. Areas of 1ha (10000m squared) are often compared to a soccer pitch.
- Doxin 4y agoMight be a regional thing then. You see square meters and square kilometers used here a lot.
- fomine3 4y agoFootball fields unit is fine compared to worse unit here. "Tokyo Dome" is quite common unit in Japan TV. I believe majority of people don't know how is it big.
- m000 4y agoNo they're not. Tokyo Dome may not be well known outside of Japan, but at least it's unambiguous: It is the Tokyo Dome vs. a football field. Even football itself is ambiguous.
- dudeinjapan 4y agoAssuming we resolve whether "football" is referring to the US, European, or Australian rules variety, each of those sports does have a standard, unambiguous playing field size.
- glandium 4y agoIn Japan, it's extremely common to use the Tokyo Dome as a unit of area, one very specific building that most people haven't seen in real life, let alone entered it.