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Expressing Measurements Via Analogies & Comparisons

As children, me and my siblings loved the comparison book that my father had. It showed you things like how many giraffes tall the Empire State Building was or how many Volkswagens a blue whale weighs. I gave my nephew a similar book recently.
 
There are units for how hot an object is, but not really for how cool it is. I feel we should introduce the milli-Fonz for that. A Fonz of course being -273,15 degrees celcius and so a milli-Fonz a thousandth of that.
 
Ridiculous.
Impossible Engineering has been using the giraffe as a unit of measurement (for height) for years.
And why only half a giraffe anyway? Is it because it rhymes?
I mean they could have said that it was as big as a horse, of course.

I once knew a giraffe who was about the same size as two half giraffes.
 
Here’s a new one.

Doug the giant vegetable so big he can wear a hat causes heartbreak for owners​

A NEW ZEALAND couple's dream of growing the world's largest potato has turned to mash after tests showed it was not in fact a spud.


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https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1582010/new-zealand-news-doug-guinness-world-records-potato
 
Aaah yes...the "Big enough to..." and the "Small enough to..." often used as a way of describing just how big or small an item is, compared to what is capable of doing.
As in "The dog was so small that it fell through the grate of the drain cover" or the oft-quoted "The passenger was so obese that they had had to book 2 airplane seats, side by side".

A hat wearing non-potato. Very good.
 
And 'Colossal Machines' has not disappointed.
Episode 1 was looking at Space exploration, and some of the nuggets I gleaned from it were;
The Space Shuttle engines produce a combined thrust equivalent to 53 engines from a 747 jumbo jet.
The weight of the 'crawler' that transports rockets to the launch pad is a little over 3000 metric tons, which is as much as 15 Statues of Liberty.
It also has a deck area the size of a baseball pitch.
The ISS solar panels generate enough electricity to power 40 normal houses.
The area of the solar panels is equal to about half a football field.

I quite like that they had to specify 'normal' houses. As though that itself is a necessary qualification to point out that the houses they use to measure against are in no way unusual.
"Oh...these houses? Nah mate....these are the ones they use to measure the output of the solar panels on the ISS against..."
 
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