7 ms·
I think Google Earth might be more wrong than the illustration. One of the two Towers of Bologna is 97m. On GE it looks less than that. 97m is more than 33 stor
by 2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
I think Google Earth might be more wrong than the illustration. One of the two Towers of Bologna is 97m. On GE it looks less than that. 97m is more than 33 stories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Bologna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Bologna
- sidewndr46 2y agoWhy do people attempt to use "stories" as a measurement of height? There is no universal agreement for what a "story" is. 97 meters is in fact 97 meters.
- TulliusCicero 2y agoBecause it's evocative, it's easier to imagine what it looks like.
- LtWorf 2y agoExcept that at some point one story was twice as tall as they are now.
- kdazzle 2y agoI think the universal agreement is actually to measure things in football fields
- llm_trw 2y agoNow if we could only agree if we should use soccer or handegg field sizes.
- vundercind 2y agoHandegg, because there’s an actual standard size for them. Which is a worse decision for a sport but makes them better for measurement. Soccer’s trying to make their sport worse by standardizing, but they’re not there yet.
- bmacho 2y agoIt will be more appealing to nerds when they could say "transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom"
- throwup238 2y agoThe number of atomic transitions a cesium 133 atom makes when fired across a football field at the speed of sound.
- tuatoru 2y ago... in dry air at STP.
- rascul 2y agoWhich handegg field size though? There is not just one standard. I think we should use the Canadian size, since they created it.
- whiterock 2y agowhich is also not normalized. A referee once told me that - in theory - football fields can be square. I think it was 80m x 80m since 80m is the minimum length and the maximum width. Correct me if I am wrong.
- madaxe_again 2y agoIf you’re Australian, they can be circular.
- mmcclimon 2y agoField size for American football is definitely standardized: 100 yards between goal lines and 160 feet wide. Lots of Americans will have an intuitive sense for how long something like "three football fields" is.
- sidewndr46 2y agoBut that intuitive size would in fact be wrong. The size we associate with an American football field is more commonly going to be the distance including the end zones.
- croisillon 2y agowith a banana for scale
- Mountain_Skies 2y agoGoing to play the pedantic card and mention that there's also no universal agreement on how to measure a building's height. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat on its own has three different methods and not everyone accepts those as being the correct and true way of measuring the building's height.
- jltsiren 2y agoI think everything in the illustration is at least twice too high. The walled part of Bologna was ~1 km in diameter at that time, and the tallest towers were ~10% of that. The model in Google Earth looks about right, at least if you compare it to this: https://static.bolognawelcome.com/immagini/ac/57/95/5d/20220601101753_landscape_16_9_desktop.jpg https://static.bolognawelcome.com/immagini/ac/57/95/5d/20220...
- LtWorf 2y agoThe illustration is modern, by an artist.
- timmaxw 2y agoReally? I zoomed in on the Towers of Bologna and then used the "measurement" tool to draw a 97m line on the ground. The line seems about as long as the tower is high. If you try that, do you get the same result?