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> Thats’s comparable to a single strand of spaghetti holding up about 3,300 one-pound bags of sugar What an odd example. A mid-sized car would have been much c
by ziofill 3mo ago
> Thats’s comparable to a single strand of spaghetti holding up about 3,300 one-pound bags of sugar
What an odd example. A mid-sized car would have been much clearer.
- flippyhead 3mo agoMust be a british thing?
- natebc 3mo agowell that's just £3300 then, yeah?
- JsonDemWitOster 3mo agoNon, du verstehst es falsch, mon amigo. According to EU standards (of which the Brits are no longer a part of) sugar bags (empty) should weigh exactly a pound each to withstand all and any shipping conditions.
- IshKebab 3mo ago> 3,300 one-pound bags of sugar Woah that must weigh almost 3,301 pounds!
- echelon 3mo agoI can't wait until our LLM agents spot these and substitute in our own favorite, personally intuitive format conversions appropriate for the scale. I'd like this to be expressed in units of pallet(s) of standard cinder blocks.
- zapkyeskrill 3mo agoBut everyone knows, by experience, what 3300 individual roughly one pound bags of sugar weighs and what sort of force is needed to hold it up. Mid sized car is ambiguous, and nobody saw anybody hold that up (seeing hulk doesn't count)
- saberience 3mo agoDo they? I don't recall ever seeing a bag of sugar in my life. I'm not a baker though so maybe that explains it. A car is more easier to picture for me.
- ninalanyon 3mo agoYou must be from the US.
- dmoy 3mo agoI am from the US and buy bags of sugar. What else does sugar come in? If not bags? I don't think I've ever bought sugar in something other than a bag.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- paradox460 3mo agoBuckets and pallets if you want more
- saberience 3mo agoI'm from Europe, I never buy sugar, why would I? I don't want more sugar in my diet.
- B1FF_PSUVM 3mo agoNot Mary Berry, then. Or anyone else who ever baked a cake. Or cooked, really. I hate sugar in food, but some recipes use sugar to balance acidity (e.g. tomato ketchup).
- sph 3mo agoMid-sized European or American car?
- antod 3mo agoThe properly calibrated unit is a Volkswagen Beetle.
- paradox460 3mo agoThe kind the man who drives the snowplow drives?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- necovek 3mo agoAnd how old is it? A B-segment vehicle has gone from 1000kg (or less) to 1300kg (or a lot more for EVs) over the last 20 years.
- xeonmc 3mo agoIt's not a question of where the car is from! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A one gram strand of noodle could not carry a 1 tonne car.
- JsonDemWitOster 3mo agoThat depends. Is the spaghetti made of pure Italian semolina or some bastardized all-purpose flour-based dough? Also, the cut thickness matters as well as how much you salted the water to boil it AND for how long you boiled it. How far is it in the raw-al dente scale?
- Tagbert 3mo agoBoth are in the same order of magnitude.
- kbelder 3mo agoI'm guessing this was initially '1.5 metric tons', and through a number of helpful and friendly conversions, ended up at 3,300 sugar bags.
- bjt 3mo agoI also thought that was weird. Then I learned it gets better. If you click through to the BBC article that was apparently their main source, the quote is this: > Alternatively, as Prof Barber explained, it can be compared to a single string of spaghetti holding up 3,000 half-kilogram bags of sugar. So the professor used an item that was familiar to his English audience (1500 kg=3307 lbs), then the Smithsonian writer tried to be helpful in converting the units, but switched to an item far less familiar to an American. I don't think I've ever bought a 1lb bag of sugar here, while a 500g bag is a little small but normal in the UK. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31500883 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31500883 https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/sainsburys-white-granulated-sugar-500g https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/sainsburys-white...
- benoau 3mo agoOr a lift full of people.
- necovek 3mo agoWhile I am totally with you on the bags of sugar, I am also unsure of the significance of a single thread of spaghetti! Is that by weight? By volume? Are we comparing uncooked (brittle) or cooked (flexible)? Even so, spaghetti strand is not known for strength or tension resistance even when considering the weight/size/volume. I can't at all understand what this comparison is meant to visualize for me, so it is obviously failing.
- yallpendantools 3mo ago> Is that by weight? By volume? It's holding up 3300 pounds. Pounds is a unit of weight. > Even so, spaghetti strand is not known for strength or tension resistance even when considering the weight/size/volume. That's...kinda the point? We have something we don't give two thoughts about (slug tooth) comparable in scale to something not known for strength or tension resistance (spaghetti) holding up to something ginormous as if it's magic. Clearly, we should study slug teeth more! Imagine if a strand of spaghetti can hold 3300 pounds. It's not possible with spaghetti but with slug teeth, it is! Now imagine the possibilities!
- B1FF_PSUVM 3mo ago> imagine the possibilities! Space elevator? Does a 35,786 km "strand of [slug-tooth] spaghetti" hold its own weight?
- necovek 3mo agoBut why a spaghetti? Why not your watch band? Or a shopping bag? Or your wedding ring? Or a spoon? Or kevlar strand? I am talking about characteristics of a spaghetti strand all along, and wondering why was it chosen — does it compare in some way to a snail's tooth, like volume, weight or size? It sounds like it is very arbitrary. Why would I even imagine it holding 1500kg in relation to a tooth.
- dyauspitr 3mo agoYou’re meant to visualize a strand as thin as spaghetti holding up an entire car. It’s an impressive visual. The properties of spaghetti (aside from its thickness) has nothing to do with anything here.