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Thursday, April 07, 2005

me, nerdy? wha?

Thanks to Google and an initial curiosity about SI prefixes brought on by a math lesson on the metric system with my son, here is what I just spent the last half-hour figuring out when I should have been typing:

earth: 5.9742 × 10^24 kilograms
one yoctoearth = 5.9742 kg = 5974.2 grams = 13.2 lb

world's oceans: 328 million cubic miles of water.
1 mile = 1.6 x 10^3 m = 1.6 x 10^5 cm
1 cubic mile = (1.6 x 10^5cm)^3 = 4.096 x 10^15cm^3 = 4.096 x 10^15 ml
oceans = (3.28 x 10^8) x (4.096 x 10^15) ml = 1.343488 x 10^24 ml
one yoctoocean = 1.343488 ml

1 mole of carbon = 6.022 x 10^23 atoms = 1.2011 x 10^1 g
1.99452 x 10^-21 g = 1 atom carbon
1.99452 x 10^-24 kg = 1 atom carbon
1 smallish cat: 1.99452 kg
1 yoctocat = 1 atom carbon

[atom of carbon]:cat::[13-lb bowling ball]:earth::[amt. of Tabasco on my omelet]:oceans

So pointless. And I'm not entirely sure all the math is correct, although I think it is. And yet... so much fun.

Also, I typed the following sentence in somebody's comments earlier today:

For movies, I just FTP them to the free webspace that I have from my ISP, and then link them from my blog.

Your average twelve-year-old, let alone your average blog-addicted housewife, could tell you exactly what that sentence means today. Yet when that twelve-year-old was born, the sentence would have been pure Greek to just about anybody. Interesting.
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