5 ms·
Well, most people can't properly understand the scientific notation, as in getting a proper scale of how big one order of magnitude is supposed to be. They may
by galaxytachyon 4y ago
Well, most people can't properly understand the scientific notation, as in getting a proper scale of how big one order of magnitude is supposed to be. They may see ^35 and say "oh, so it is like less than 100 of something, meh".
If you doubt that, remember the quarter pounder ads where they made people think 1/4 is kinda more than 1/2 because 4>2...
- seanhunter 4y agoThe point is how are people ever going to get intuition about the numbers if they don't report them in blue whales/football pitches/double decker busses?
- samus 4y agoAt these scales, it really doesn't make much of a difference, as a sibling commenter pointed out.
- seanhunter 4y agoI was being sarcastic. Pretty sure it's impossible for the vast majority of people (myself definitely included) to gain any kind of intuition for numbers of this scale. I also don't gain any intuition for things by comparing them to a blue whale etc (and I'm not really sure anyone else does either) and find it pretty weird that it seems to be a go-to comparison for science articles in the press.