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> An LPT can weigh as much as two blue whales I'm sure glad they used such a commonly understood unit of weight. It really helps me understand the size of the
by WorkerBee28474 2y ago
> An LPT can weigh as much as two blue whales
I'm sure glad they used such a commonly understood unit of weight. It really helps me understand the size of the item better than pounds or tons.
- jimmaswell 2y agoGave me a much better frame of reference than some huge scalar, personally.
- teruakohatu 2y agoPounds is so imperial. I prefer measuring using Loaves of Bread (lb) to communicate mass. 2 * bw ≈ 630,000 lb
- teddyh 2y agoUnleavened bread?
- dagss 2y agoAs a metric European, blue whales give me a lot more intuition to work on than pounds. Tons would be nice though.
- mgiampapa 2y agoI'm sorry, only long tons or short tons. Why have one unit when you can have two? In metric it's a Tonne.
- Symbiote 2y agoIn many European languages the spelling like "ton" is used for 1000kg. It's primarily in English where there's still a need to distinguish between metric tons and older units.
- eecc 2y agoIn UCUM it’s disambiguated as MetricTon
- Angostura 2y agoTon v Tonne?
- PaulHoule 2y ago"metric ton" vs "short ton" is a little long but precise. Lately I've been thinking about the economics of plastic materials which are made from monomers which cost about 50 cents per pound or, as it turns out, $1000 per short ton. It is all approximate (prices go up and down) and might as well be per metric ton.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- vasco 2y agoHow do you go through life without once deciding to learn the rough conversion between kgs and pounds (just double it, 1kg~=2lbs) or miles and kms (~1.5x it, 1mi~=1.5km) and so on? Do you consume american media and just shrug every time you see a number and go "oops there's no way I can understand this now" unless you use Google? Also european here.
- Gud 2y agoAlthough I agree with you, the phrasing of your reply is needlessly snarky.
- vasco 2y agoI agree, I tend to come out like this. Working on it. I do think it's a huge time saver for your whole life after to remember these 2 numbers. I use this information dozens of times per day.
- Al-Khwarizmi 2y agoMiles to km, yes. As another European, I know that because it's relevant to understand when they talk about speed limits, top speeds of cars, etc. Pounds to kg... If it's written media, I just paste it to Google and get the conversion. If it's movies or shows, honestly I don't think I have found an instance while it actually matters at all. If a movie character says "Oh, no, I've gained 10 pounds in a month, I need to go on a diet" you know that they're sad because that's a non-negligible amount of weight, and knowing how much it exactly is doesn't affect understanding of the movie at all. It's a similar situation to old novels talking about money... When you read a novel from 200 years ago talking about dollars, pounds or whatever, do you look at the historic inflation rate to check today's equivalence? You might, if you're a perfectionist, but the truth is that you can perfectly understand such novels without knowing that just by the context in which they mention money.
- Retric 2y agoHistoric inflation numbers are constantly changing depending on the year, pounds to kg is just one number. 2.2 is good enough for most practical purposes, even 1 kg = 1 lbs isn’t that bad and it’s easier to calculate. It’s like not knowing how many months are in a year…. I mean you don’t need to remember, but people will look at you funny if you’re constantly looking it up.
- marcosdumay 2y ago2 pounds = 1 kg Just like 3 feet = 1 m and 4" = 10 cm. Those are not "good enough for XKCD" approximations, but they are good enough to understand what people are saying. Now, if I had something similar for Fahrenheit! One could use the hash of the temperature number and it would mean the same to me.
- jerf 2y ago"Now, if I had something similar for Fahrenheit!" Subtract 30, divide by two. 100 Farenheit, a very hot day, is 35 on this scale, but 37C on the real scale. 32F, the freezing point, is 1 on this scale but 0C for real. -10F, freaking cold, is -20 on this scale and -23C for real. For human temperatures the diff is negligible versus the real conversion. Obviously that freezing point is a big problem for real science, but who does real science with Fahrenheit anyhow, even in the US? Still an ugly conversion, certainly, but you don't need the "2" in the 32 or the 9/5s ratio to get a good-enough-for-the-weather result. (Likewise in reverse; multiply by two, add 30. Order matters, of course.)
- catlifeonmars 2y agoDoes 2.8 billion honeybees help?
- croisillon 2y agoi miss a banana for scale
- dgan 2y agoThe article was interesting until thar line, now reads like a joke..
- Maken 2y agoThey should have used Olympic swimming pools.
- rob74 2y agoHow many olympic swimming pools do you need to accommodate a blue whale?
- WorkerBee28474 2y agoA blue whale can be 30m long, 5m high, and 10m wide, so to fit in Olympic-size swimming pools (50m/25m/2+m) you'd need 3 pools stacked on top of each other. (Technically there's no limit to the depth of the Olympic pool, so you might just need 1 really deep one.)
- imranhou 2y agoA blue whale floats in water, does the LPT?
- brookst 2y agoUnfortunately blue whales are a terrible, archaic measure. There’s too much variability in mass, and then you’ve got the buoyancy problem and different salinity, plus pressure at depth. Any modern scientific discussion should be done exclusively using standardized measures, like 747’s or 10-story office buildings.
- jaredklewis 2y agoDon’t forget the standardized unit for volume: Olympic swimming pools.
- euroderf 2y agoAn iconic (and widely-known) skyscraper with a mass in a usable range (because it is not SO huge) might be the Flatiron building.