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Expressing Measurements Via Analogies & Comparisons

Ahah - back to the O.S.P. eh? Unusual to see it used as a comparative for 'length' as you usually see it used for volume/capacity.
 
Not by any means a new episode but I caught "Impossible Engineering" on the Gerald R Ford class aircraft carrier this morning. Dimensions are: the width of an Airbus 380's wingspan; the length of 60 New York cabs, and the height of Nelson's column!
So far pretty good, but then they spoilt it by saying the carriers 'dwarfed their predecessors'. Well maybe most, but not the obvious comparator, their immediate predecessors the Nimitz class. Compared to Nimitz, Gerald R Ford is about the same length, about the same beam (although more usable deck space) and about the same displacement.
 
H'mm Nelson's column:

https://www.aboutbritain.com/NelsonsColumn.htm 169 ft or 51.6 m

https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/nelson-s-column said to be 170ft2ins Distance from Victory's main masthead to quarterdeck

http://www.speel.me.uk/sculptlondon/nelsonscolumn.htm About 150ft statue is 18ft so asume 168 ft (although it isn't clear the first doesn't include the statue

https://www.walklondon.com/london-attractions/trafalgar-square-nelsons-column.htm 5.5 m statue on a 46m column

There is also a plinth which no one mentions and some of the conversions aren't too accurate.

There are and have been more than one Nelson's column, not just the one in Trafalgar Square.

What we need are platinum Flamingoes, Nelson's columns, Olympic, swimming pools, London Busses (various types), Wembley Satdiums, Chimp's arses, etc. kept in stable temperatures, pressures , etc. somewhere so that they can be used as a standard reference.
 
(...) kept in stable temperatures, pressures , etc. somewhere so that they can be used as a standard reference.
They are - they're kept in a special building that is the same size as 3 Royal Albert Halls, which is located just outside London, about the same distance from the M25 as 14 Forth Bridges placed end to end.
 
They are - they're kept in a special building that is the same size as 3 Royal Albert Halls, which is located just outside London, about the same distance from the M25 as 14 Forth Bridges placed end to end.
So one third of the building is taken up with a platinum Albert Hall?
 
Ahah - the lesser used standard units of measurement of area:
'Greater London' and 'Cornwall'.

British scientists are tracking two of the world's biggest icebergs (...)
A group of researchers photographed one named A81 (...) as large as Greater London.
Another team sailed around A76a, (...) the size of Cornwall.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64919341

I guess that if the larger of the 2 melted it could flood...well...'Cornwall'.
 
Ahah - the lesser used standard units of measurement of area:
'Greater London' and 'Cornwall'.

British scientists are tracking two of the world's biggest icebergs (...)
A group of researchers photographed one named A81 (...) as large as Greater London.
Another team sailed around A76a, (...) the size of Cornwall.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64919341

I guess that if the larger of the 2 melted it could flood...well...'Cornwall'.
And the one the size of Greater London won't melt as they've put a ULEZ on it.
 

Himalayas lost glaciers equal to weight of 570 million elephants in 20 years​

“We estimate that this equates glacier mass loss of around 2.7 Gt, which is about the same weight as 570 million elephants, and which has not been previously accounted for ..."

https://www.indiatoday.in/environme...t-of-570-million-elephants-2355993-2023-04-05
I am having a problem even visualising 570 million elephants. Converting them into weight? How many London buses would that be?
 
I can see a problem
I think there was a word missing from the title - it probably should have read 'common armadillo'.
Because the nine-banded armadillo, also known as the nine-banded long-nosed armadillo or common long-nosed armadillo, which is found in North, Central, and South America, makes it the most widespread of the armadillos.
 
I think there was a word missing from the title - it probably should have read 'common armadillo'.
Because the nine-banded armadillo, also known as the nine-banded long-nosed armadillo or common long-nosed armadillo, which is found in North, Central, and South America, makes it the most widespread of the armadillos.

We need an international standard armadillo. I nominate Geoff:

nine-banded-armadillo-images.jpg


Geoff

He's reliable and works cheap.

Agent: [email protected]

maximus otter
 
In this short video (no need to watch it) about an hydroelectric dam it is mentioned that it produces enough power to charge 100 000 electric cars.

Yes, it's that time of night and I'm watching crap on youtube.


Edit:

In this video it is stated that boiling a kettle is the same power as 28 average cyclists peddling as hard as they can. 8mins 40secs.

Lord, help me please.

 
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I am having a problem even visualising 570 million elephants. Converting them into weight? How many London buses would that be?

An Enviro400 bus without passengers weighs 11 tonnes according to wikipedia so the glaciers lost about 250 million London buses-weight. Easier of course to imagine the buses carrying passengers. If the buses were all fully loaded you'd only need around 150 million of them... Plus about 10 billion passengers.

oxo
 
...In this video it is stated that boiling a kettle is the same power as 28 average cyclists peddling as hard as they can...

Lord, help me please...

But really - if an accurate comparison, is that such an unreasonable analogy to make? Are any of them?

I suspect maybe we’re all just being a bit unfair. (Yup, me too – I’ve definitely indulged.)

The idea that we might visualise one the thing in order to, by comparison, visualise another is not intrinsically ridiculous or outlandish. I strongly suspect that all of use such analogy to some extent, and that anyone who claims they don’t do this in one context or another is either unaware of their own mental processes, or being disingenuous. Human beings are not precisely calibrated devices for the purposes of universal measurement - we need help, and I believe there’s evidence that such comparative techniques are in fact an important element in how our brains work (as well as a factor in the development of language).

Rough visual comparisons were clearly the basis for anthropometric units (which constitute many of the very earliest systems of measurement) and which would originally, by their nature, have been analogous rather than based on solid and precisely repeatable data: a cubit may have become an exact measurement, independent of its relationship to the human body - but its origins are clearly much less precise.

(In regard to the cubit: I very much like the tale that in order to standardise this rather nebulous measurement, first millennium rabbis decided to ‘regulate' the measurement by defining it as...well…six fist breadths; and a fist breadth as four finger breadths; and a finger breadth as the width of a thumb. So, it all boiled down to thumbs. Because…obviously.)

And an oxgang is surely just an analogy – I mean, what if your cow was faster than your neighbours? And if your family was fatter than your neighbours - would that have made your hide bigger? If you had a limp, was your league a bit shorter? (And a barleycorn? Seriously?) And if a newspaper report told us that, say, a chemical reaction took the same time to complete as it would for a human to blink three times, we’d all raise our eyebrows knowingly and chunter about the stupidity of the human race – despite the fact that Hindu mathematicians used the analogy as part of a system of time measurement so complex that it would make their average contemporary in the west bleed out of their earholes thinking about it.

I use measurement constantly as part of my job, and have dozens of devices to help – from the strictly analogue, to the hi-tec. And I’m happy working in both metric and imperial.

However, I will still base an idea of, say, the area of a kitchen floor, or a garden, or a steel-deck stage, on how many standard sheets of ply I could fit on it. And I measure all moderate weights in my own precise unit: the ‘bag of plaster’. (Oh, and all short to medium journeys are graded on comparison to the length of time it takes to drive from my place to Macclesfield.)

You could argue that because these things have a standard – (standard sheet of ply – 8’x4’ / 2440x1220mm); bag of plaster – 12.5 kilos; and Macc is 11 miles / 25 minutes give or take away) then I am referencing, in a roundabout way, an actual measurement.

But actually, no - I’m comparing one thing, in and of itself, to another, rather than calculating an actual figure based on that comparison - and although those two statements might be claimed to amount to the same thing, I think there’s a difference.

I think two neurological processes may be going off in tandem: I think the right side of my brain is employing my imagination to assist the left side of my brain in looking for precise logical patterns.

And maybe that’s all this amounts to. If so – maybe it’s really not as stupid as people are making out.
 
Much easier just to boil a kettle:loopy:
Lordy-Lordy, for heaven sakes, 'peddle' that video as fast as you can!:omr:
An Enviro400 bus without passengers weighs 11 tonnes according to wikipedia so the glaciers lost about 250 million London buses-weight. Easier of course to imagine the buses carrying passengers. If the buses were all fully loaded you'd only need around 150 million of them... Plus about 10 billion passengers.

oxo
OH I-CE!
 
I use measurement constantly as part of my job, and have dozens of devices to help – from the strictly analogue, to the hi-tec. And I’m happy working in both metric and imperial.

I will still base an idea of, say, the area of a kitchen floor, or a garden, or a steel-deck stage, on how many standard sheets of ply I could fit on it. And I measure all moderate weights in my own precise unit: the ‘bag of plaster’. (Oh, and all short to medium journeys are graded on comparison to the length of time it takes to drive from my place to Macclesfield.)

I’m comparing one thing, in and of itself, to another, rather than calculating an actual figure based on that comparison - and although those two statements might be claimed to amount to the same thing, I think there’s a difference.

I think two neurological processes may be going off in tandem: I think the right side of my brain is employing my imagination to assist the left side of my brain in looking for precise logical patterns.

And maybe that’s all this amounts to. If so – maybe it’s really not as stupid as people are making out.

Great post! Real world reckoning based on actual experience and comparison is very sensible and it's what we all do all the time.

But this thread started with scriptwriters -not people actually doing stuff- reaching for comparisons that were further from everyday experience than the original situation.
 
...But this thread started with scriptwriters -not people actually doing stuff- reaching for comparisons that were further from everyday experience than the original situation.

Granted. And some of the comparisons are admittedly odd. But, in general, the thread does seem to have descended into a bit of a pile on.

(A metric pile on, obviously: 3 lads + 2 fat lads + Barney from the fourth form + some boy from another school who just turned up out of nowhere and no-one knows the name of. And Mr Driver, the biology teacher - but we're not supposed to mention that since the police came round.)
 
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Granted. And some of the comparisons are admittedly odd. But, in general, the thread does seem to have descended into a bit of a pile on.

(A metric pile on, obviously: 3 lads + 2 fat lads + Barney from the fourth form + some boy from another school who just turned up out of nowhere and no-one knows the name of. And Mr Driver, the biology teacher - but we're not supposed to mention that since the police came round.)

Indeed.

To return to slagging off lazy journos:
In this video it is stated that boiling a kettle is the same power as 28 average cyclists peddling as hard as they can. 8mins 40secs.

Lord, help me please.


That's actually quite a good analogy: 28 cyclists' power output = one electric kettle!

Unfortunately it's not true: Guy showed his kettle drawing 2800 watts so that rates the cyclists at 100 watts each. 100 watts is the rule of thumb output for a man (probably a young man) at rest. That average cyclist must be able to put out at least 300w for short periods.

sedentary oxo
 
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