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Mathematics as a concept—not even a discipline, though that too—is one of those things that is both science but also magic at the same time.

Science, because, d’uh, but magic because just look at the kind of mind-boggling shenanigans you can get into by simply assuming that one divided by three is one third, and one third is 0.(3) and times 3 it’s 0.(9). Who Houdinied that extra 0.(1) away?!

But outside the wonder that this scientific “logic” provides, it’s pretty much useless. And you bet there’s a dedicated community around useless math online—well, useless, but interesting.

#1

One 9 Inch Pizza vs. Two 5 Inch Pizzas

One 9 Inch Pizza vs. Two 5 Inch Pizzas

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Alewa
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I would be more concerned that they are not making the pizzas/dough fresh if a certain size was not available.

Anne Reid
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

There are a ton of great pizza places in NYC that make their dough fresh. When it runs out, they close for the day.

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Donkeywheel
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Even if this owner never learned any maths in his life, never heard of Pi, it’s completely obvious when you look at the quantity of ingredients. He wasn’t « speechless » because it never occurred.

Bernd Herbert
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The title of this story is "useless but interesting calculations". How was this example useless? OP got more Pizza!

SM
Community Member
11 months ago

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Mocha the Lion
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

cant tell if this is a "and then everyone clapped and i own the company now" or a "huh. maybe math isnt useless" moment (math is important, but not when your teaching me that John has 1,064 siblings)

ToGo
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yeah, so I'd have told him to leave my restaurant and get a pizza Pi elsewhere.

Peppermallow
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

If the Radius is Z, then the Area of the ciricle is calculated by: Pi * Z * Z = A

Jackson
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

MIT hosted NASA's Annual Conference on Manual Control in 1982. Several of the people attending had dinner in a restaurant near the campus. They discussed one of the papers over dinner. The waiter overheard part of this and asked some questions. The diners tried to explain things as simply as possible. The waiter said it sounded like what we were trying to say was something like this, then he picked up a paper napkin and started writing equations. The owner later explained that he had wanted to be an engineer, but could not afford it. Now that he had money, he only hired graduate students.

DB
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

MATH! Short for mathematics. MATHS is not a word! It's meme slang. No one takes you seriously when you post slang.

GlitterPanda
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

while the calculations are right...I seriously doubt this entire encounter happened.

Wintermute
Community Member
11 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And everyone clapped, right? If this is remotely true, then the owner gave this bozo 4 pizzas just to shut him up.

Jacob B.
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I do this all the time at the store. Wife asked me to pick up lotion for her and I know which brand. Larger size was on sale, so cheaper per ounce. Smaller wasn't but had a buy two get one free, ounce price didn't seem right until I realized they were pricing it as one. Turns out the buy two and one free was half of the the sale item. Scruitinize your prices everyone.

xczechr
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yeah, this totally happened. The nine-inch pizza was unavailable, lol.

Bob Brooce
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Besides the very obvious size difference, the amount of material makes it basically impossible for people who have worked for more than a day or two in a place that serves pizza to not know that two 5" pizzas doesn't equal a9" pizza. Add me to the long list of people who think this story is b******t. I've got to assume that the busiest of all the subreddits is r/s**t that never happened.

Nice Beast Ludo
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I have no idea what I just read. I tried to take maths seriously sir, my brain just rejected everything

Timbob
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yeah, but Bubba, my BF, says pizzas are round, not square.

Phil Vaive
Community Member
11 months ago

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Stuart
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I must be missing something here. This guy's math is all wrong. If the radius of the pie is 9" (already squared) then x pi it would be 28.27 sq.in. The 5" would be 15.7 sq.in, so the two of the pizzas would be 31.4 sq.in. The two five inch pizzas would have over compensated him by 3.13 in. Am I doing something wrong??

~nope~
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The 9” pizza has a diameter of 9”, so the radius is 4.5”, giving an answer of π x 4.5^2 = 63.62 :)

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Boo-Urns
Community Member
11 months ago (edited)

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So, you were at a cr4p-a$$ restaurant that used pre-made pizza crusts?!?!?!?!? (Hilarious that the word c**p is censored on this stupid, stupid site.)

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#2

How Tall Would This Tree Have Been, And How Visible Would It Have Been?

How Tall Would This Tree Have Been, And How Visible Would It Have Been?

"So the ave stump height is cut to 0.45 m. Let's assume an oak, with an ave height of 20m. Thats about 2.3% of overall height.

This tree would therefore be around 11.7km high using that ratio. Almost high enough to tickle the stratosphere at 12km

So if I used the horizon calculator right, you could still see the bastard 387km away

EDIT: Just to answer a few of the many questions. In American that'd be about 7.3miles, or 13,760 washing machines"

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#3

A Natural Headache Cure

A Natural Headache Cure

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Tucker Cahooter
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Plus you would probably be dead from cyanide poisoning before you finished eating them

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So, there’s a community on Reddit called r/TheyDidTheMath, which captions itself as “useless, yet interesting calculations.” The description smugly points out “and they said math has no real world applications.”

The subreddit is ranked in the top 1% on the platform and boasts 1.4 million members.

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#4

What Does His Shirt Say

What Does His Shirt Say

"The quote is "I'm sexy and I know it"

sqrt(1+tan^2) can be verbalized as "sec" and so this formula is the "sec of c"

"I'm sec C and I know it""

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#5

Is This True?

Is This True?

"They’re called crinkle crankles. A single leaf wall over that distance would need brick piers approx every 1.5-2m if it was a retaining wall it would need to be at least 9” wide (2 bricks). The crinkle crankle has more strength due to it’s curved nature so can be 4” wide or a single leaf of bricks.

For the maths if we can assume they’re true semi-circles then each semi circle would be 1/2piD or 1.57D whereas a double leaf wall would be 2D for the same length D

Therefore using 21.5% less bricks than a double leaf wall"

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Donkeywheel
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The actual reason has nothing to do with the quantity of bricks needed. It’s a matter of foundation and ground stability. A straight wall requires (a lot) more work to prepare the ground. With adapted buttresses it would require less bricks and be more stable. But it would be longer and more expensive to build. These corrugated walls were just.. the cheap option.

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#6

Approximately How Large Would The Car Have To Be In Order To Be That Curved?

Approximately How Large Would The Car Have To Be In Order To Be That Curved?

"Quick eyeballing suggests a curvature of about 30°; that's 1/12th of a full circle, so given that the Earth's circumference is just over 40,000 km, the car would have to be about 3333 km long, or about the driving distance from Chicago to Los Angeles, or about 5.5 million washing machines (in case you're too American to understand kilometers)."

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Bernd Herbert
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

There's something you should always consider: Imagine the dumbest person you can. There will always be a flatearther around who's dumber!

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You can say the subreddit deals in very situational and contextual math where you’d probably only be able to use it in very niche cosmological occasions.

Like calculating the amount of toilet paper you’d need for 14 days of quarantine. Or what all the humans as fine goo would look like in Central Park. Or the number of small pizzas you’d need to substitute a large pizza. OK, that last one sounds useful.

#7

How Much Does This Kitten Weigh?

How Much Does This Kitten Weigh?

"One source says the “minimum actuation force” of a key is 47.6 grams. If we assume the kitten is standing on 4 keys (only one per paw) 4*47.6 is 190.4 grams or 0.4 pounds. Ao the kitten would be under that weight. It appears that the kitten is standing on more than 4 keys though so maybe 1/2 pound."

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Donkeywheel
Community Member
11 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Minimal actuation force is exactly that, a minimum, to ensure keys are not too easily pressed. The actual average force needed is way higher. And increases with time because of dirt, dust, crumbs..

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#8

Really Though, How Much Different Exactly?

Really Though, How Much Different Exactly?

"$9.33 on the left and $21.51 on the right"

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#9

How Many Combinations Of 9 Ingredients Are Possible. Using All 9 At Once Is Not Required

How Many Combinations Of 9 Ingredients Are Possible. Using All 9 At Once Is Not Required

"Each ingredient can either be included or not -- that's 2 possibilities. Multiply out all 9 ingredients and we have 29 = 512 in total. I presume you'd want to exclude the 1 possibility where none of the ingredients are included, so that leaves 511."

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Hawkmoon
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's the same thing in theory with particle physics: only 26 (not sure, maybe more) subatomic elements governed by 4 forces would constitute absolutely all the matter, living or not, in the known universe.

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Bored Panda has reached out to the founder of the subreddit, r/FragTheWhale, who was more than happy to tell us more about r/TheyDidTheMath.

"I was a part of the tool subreddit, r/toolband, and someone had made an actual calculated, in-depth analysis of a Tool lyric 'slide a mile six inches at a time on Maynard's [ding-dong]' and what length of time it would take," elaborated Frag. "Loved the idea so much, I created a subreddit for it with 1.54 million subs!"

#10

Is This True And If Yes How Deos It Work?

Is This True And If Yes How Deos It Work?

"Quite the opposite, it will leave you with less sandwich. Since no cut is perfect, some of the sandwich molecules will stay on the knife or there is more crumbs on the cutting board. Therefore, cutting on a diagonal (longest cut) will dislodge more material of the sandwich than cutting along shorter line"

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#11

How Much Would This Actually Cost?

How Much Would This Actually Cost?

"Return flight JFK - Madrid: ~€750 Minimum income in Spain: €850/mo; 24 months amount to €20400. We'll assume that since a lot of people in Spain have to make do with this much, you will figure it out too. Learning Spanish is pretty straightforward, if you live in Spain for 2 years, you're practically guaranteed to pick up enough of it to get by, but let's say you spend €100 on a couple textbooks and a dictionary, just to get you started. Depending on where in the US you live, there might even be a solid chance that you already speak the language, after all it's the country's second language, with more speakers in the US than in Spain. You will also be spending a bit on visas and other bureaucratic requirements, let's call that another €200. Running with the bulls and getting trampled can be had for free. And then there's the hip replacement itself, at $7,371, or €7074. However, depending how you play it, you could actually take a minimum-wage job in Spain, and qualify for public healthcare, in which case the hip replacement might actually be covered. But let's just assume you have to pay for it out of pocket (which, frankly, is a pretty unusual thing in Europe, and typically only happens when people have to get treatement abroad and the insurance situation hasn't been figured out, or for a couple religious weirdos who object against having health insurance on moral grounds).

So let's ring you up; grand total: €28524, that's about $29700.

Not only does it fit comfortably into the US figure, you even have some $12,000 to spare"

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#12

What Is A Penguins Slapping Power?

What Is A Penguins Slapping Power?

"The average emperor penguin slaps with about the same force as a middleweight boxer. 800-1000 PSI"

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Multa Nocte
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I would MUCH rather be slapped by an emperor penguin than by a middleweight boxer, however.

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Despite the tagline "useless math", the subreddit actually serves an important educational function.

"I think it can serve an educational purpose! Especially in terms of shifting perspectives or addressing myths (something about too many bananas are bad for you? Turns out, you'd have to eat like 4,000 bananas in a day to overdose on potassium, something like that). Initially, people kinda used it as a tool to get others to do their math homework for them."

#13

I’ve Always Wondered How Much Money Walt Actually Had

I’ve Always Wondered How Much Money Walt Actually Had

"Assuming those are $100 bill stacks at $10,000 each. I count 12 stacks across and 15 stacks deep and assuming that each stack is ~0.5 inches tall with a total height of ~30 inches.

12 * 15 * (30 / 0.5) * 10,000 = $108 Million dollars."

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T Smith
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The problem was they weren't all the same denomination. That's why Skyler couldn't count it and couldn't calculate it. She did say she tried weighing it, but again all different denominations

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#14

A Lot Of Paper, But How Much

A Lot Of Paper, But How Much

"36,567,729 sheets of letter sized paper according to Excel (single sided)

According to Google a pallet contains 200,000 sheets

Therefore 182 pallets of paper would be needed.

A photocopier can apparently print 500,000 sheets in its lifetime, so you would need 73 photocopiers"

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Tucker Cahooter
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And they will curse themselves that they didn't do Print Preview first

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#15

How Many Rocks Would This Person Have To Throw To Flood Denmark?

How Many Rocks Would This Person Have To Throw To Flood Denmark?

"The total area of ocean is about 361 million square km, or 3.61 x 1014 square meters.

The highest point of Denmark is about 171m.

The earth is large enough that we can choose to ignore the curvature over a change of radius of 171m (compared to the radius of 6300km it’s less than a rounding error).

What we can’t ignore is that there is about 30 million square km of land that is 171m or less above sea level which will also be flooded (estimating from a hypsographic curve). I’ll factor in a mean of half of that to give the new earths surface figure of 3.76 x 1014 square meters.

This means that there would need to be 171 x 3.76 x 1014 = 6.43 x 1016 cubic meters of water displaced.

If we assume a good throwing rock has a volume of 1 litre, then you would need 6.43 x 1019 rocks.

At 1 rock per day that’s going to be 1.76 x 1017 years, or 12 900 000 times the age of the universe.

If all 8 billion people on the world threw one rock per second, it would only take 250 years"

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When asked what the community is like, OP explained that it's hard to say for sure as they have taken a step back from Reddit as a whole. But, the community seems to thrive all the same, and, over the years, Frag noticed that there are essentially two camps of people: the crowd that's all about silly humor in math, and the crowd that's all about hardcore science and analytics.

It goes without saying that it is very entertaining to see people take silly discussions both seriously and scientifically.

#16

How Many Nickels Would It Take To Crush You?

How Many Nickels Would It Take To Crush You?

"According to a google search, it takes about 4,000 newtons to crush a bone, & I’m going to assume that an average person has a frontal surface area of 1 m2 for ease.

A nickel weighs 5 grams, which equates to about 0.05 newtons of gravitational force… you’d need at least 81,578 nickels on top of the person, or about $4,078.90"

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#17

What Are The Odds?

What Are The Odds?

"Beginner: 1 in 102 million
Intermediate: 1 in 6.1 million
Expert: 1 in 477,000"

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David Paterson
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That may be wrong, because Minesweeper is set up so that you can't hit a mine on the first hit. If you initially choose where a mine is then the algorithm moves the mine. So it's p^8 rather than (1-p)p^8. I don't know if they've taken that into account.

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#18

How Much Would This Cool The Tea?

How Much Would This Cool The Tea?

"Oh come on this is doable from an engineering point of view:

One sip per second of 10ml (a shot glas' equivalent in a few seconds)

90°C tea, 0°C water (I see ice?), ∆T =90

Conduction in the thin straw is negligible, basically water-to-water heat transfer at a slow rate: the convection coëfficiënt for that is about 1000W/m²K (forced convection water to unforced water essentially)

Straw is 5mm diameter, 150mm length is submerged. Total area = 5π*150 = 2350mm² heat exchange area.

As such, the heat (power) transferred per second is = 9010002350/1e6 ≈ 211W

211W for 0.01kg water (tea) per second is ∆T = 211/4200/0.01 ≠ 5°C difference.

This matches my experience: the straw is simply not big enough to offer proper area for heat exchange:

Source: 10 years of steam boiler engineering

Hope you enjoyed!"

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T Smith
Community Member
11 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

what if the entire submerged part of the straw was all "bendy" part, and that acted as radiator fins? Would that make a significant difference?

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When asked about any favorite posts on the subreddit, the founder noted that it's hard to pick out a favorite. Whenever they pop on to the subreddit, it feels like everyone is still staying true to what the subreddit originally was and stood for nearly a decade back.

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#19

How Fast Would You Need To Go To Successfully Complete The Loop?

How Fast Would You Need To Go To Successfully Complete The Loop?

"Im gonna assume the loop is about 60m based on the height of the building next to it.

At the top of the circle, the two forces are mg and centripetal force. The two together equal ma (a being v2/r.) So mg + Fc = m(v2/r). Set Fc to 0 as you would have to have a centripetal force slightly above 0 to complete the loop. This gives us v2 = sqrt(gr). For a 60m loop (30m radius) v = 17.1m/s.

This is the speed at the TOP of the loop. Using conservation of energy, we can say that 1/2mv2 + mgh = 1/2mv2 (the first part is top of loop, second part is bottom of loop). Cancel m and plug in numbers.

You would have to travel 38.34m/s or 138kph (85.7mph) to make the loop."

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#20

If The Sun Turned Into A Black Hole Of Equivalent Mass, Would The Accretion Disk Disk Be Large Enough To Destroy The Earth? If Not, How Bright Would It Be?

If The Sun Turned Into A Black Hole Of Equivalent Mass, Would The Accretion Disk Disk Be Large Enough To Destroy The Earth? If Not, How Bright Would It Be?

"NASA did the math on this

"If the Sun was replaced with a black hole that had the same mass as the Sun, the Schwarzschild radius would be 3 km (compared to the Sun's radius of nearly 700,000 km). Hence the Earth would have to get very close to get sucked into a black hole at the center of our Solar System.""

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David Paterson
Community Member
11 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

In other words, there wouldn't be an accretion disk, because the scenario of replacing the Sun by a black hole doesn't require one. However the only way in practice for the Sun to become a black hole would be for it to swallow a small one. An extra calculation would be required to calculate both how long it would take the Sun to collapse into a black hole after swallowing a small black hole. And what the effect of conservation of angular omentum has on the presence or absence of an accretion disk because the Sun's spin angular momentum is conserved which may not be possible with a Kerr black hole alone.

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#21

How Much Would This Cost In That Time?

How Much Would This Cost In That Time?

"He's a corporate executive of some sort and the trip was being paid for by the family member in Paris. His wife was also a fairly successful artist.

A 800k house in Bay Area probably cost >5M today"

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Donkeywheel
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Bay Area prices? Who cares? That’s not where the house is located. FYI the actual house was sold for 1.5M in 2012 and is now estimated to be worth 2.3M (2022).

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"I have basically never had a hand in moderating," elaborated the creator of the subreddit. "But for the first 5 or so mods I took on, I did encourage them to really just let the community sort out what they did or didn't want to be content. And especially after the first big influx of subs, straight from the get-go, I think the community understood what they wanted out of it, what they didn't, and the content reflected that."

#22

As It Asks, Which One Is The Better Deal?

As It Asks, Which One Is The Better Deal?

"A circle has 360 degrees, so 60/360 is 1/6th of a pizza, and 45/360 is 1/8.

The area of a circle is (pi)r2

The area of the 6" pizza is 1/6(pi)(62 )=6(pi)

The area of the 7" pizza is 1/8(pi)(72 )=6.125(pi)

6.125/6=1.021, so the 7" pizza is 2.1% bigger

$1.70/$1.50 is 1.13, or 13% more expensive.

The 7" pizza is 13% more expensive, but only 2.1% bigger, so the 6" pizza is a better deal."

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#23

How Much Force Is Superman’s Key Putting Down And Shouldn’t It Have Its Own Gravitational Pull?

How Much Force Is Superman’s Key Putting Down And Shouldn’t It Have Its Own Gravitational Pull?

"500,000 tons is its downward force due to gravity. It has a gravitational pull, but minimal compared to the earth (6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons)"

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T Smith
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

however, I doubt the concrete could have supported that mass over such a small area.

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#24

Is It True?

Is It True?

"If only contacting the floor with the heel then yes.

An elephant's foot is 15-19 inches across, so assuming it's vaguely circular gives an area of at least 0.114m2 per foot. Elephants when walking depending on the gait will have 2/3 feet in contact with the floor - so that's at least 0.228m2 in contact with the floor. (Going for minimum area as this will give the highest pressure for the comparison)

6000lbs under Earth's gravity is a force of 26.7kN, which when divided by area for a pressure of ~117kPa - if it's just standing still this could actually be halved to approx 58kPa

If a 100lb woman (445N) is standing on only her heels (~1cm2 x 2) this is a pressure of 2,224kPa which is indeed about 20 times higher than the elephant on 2 feet.

However that's not really representative of how heels are worn, even the picture shown has the shoes in contact with at least 20x the area of the ground than just the heels"

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Ace
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Except when walking there may well be a point at which the full weight is on the heel only.

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Even if you don’t take math seriously, you can still have some fun with it. Introducing the Useless Calculator. It’s essentially a prank app that bamboozles and confuses folks with its chaos by scrambling all the number keys, sporadic jump-scares, creepy sounds, flashy images, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it also got the math part wrong too where 2 plus 2 is my left shoe on the moon. Or whatever.

#25

Is This Claim Actually Accurate?

Is This Claim Actually Accurate?

"Yes, a 33 round single elimination bracket would have 233 participants, which is about 8.5 billion. So it is actually possible, since the world pop is probably just under 8 billion, that the winner would be someone who had the 1st round bye and only had to win 32 times"

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VonBlade
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

People always underestimate how big numbers get when you double them. As anyone who did the old "grain of rice/coin on a chess board" problem can attest.

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#26

What Are The Actual Odds Of Winning 32 Hands Of Blackjack In A Row?

What Are The Actual Odds Of Winning 32 Hands Of Blackjack In A Row?

"I believe blackjack gives the house a 0.61% edge over the player on average when played absolutely perfectly. Assuming the same odds for every game, .493932 leads me to a .000000000157% chance of winning 32 games in a row."

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#27

How Large Would This Bat Need To Be To Fit The Signatures Of Everyone Alive?

How Large Would This Bat Need To Be To Fit The Signatures Of Everyone Alive?

"Rough estimate: 8 *109 people , Assuming a 10 cm2 signature/person to make the numbers easy. This comes from a 10cm long signature 1 cm in width.

Gives 8*1010 cm2 = 8*106 m2 in area. If we model the bat as a cylinder of length L, the surface area is SA = 2 pi r2 + 2 pi r *L, so if the bat has a length of 1 meter to fit in our hand, the second term is negligible, as r will be huge.

So A / 2pi = A/6 ~ 1 *106 m2 , square root to get the radius,

R = 1 * 103 m = 1 km

So if the bat is a meter long, it would have to be around a kilometer in radius to fit everyone’s signatures."

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But, in all seriousness, math isn’t going away any time soon. We need it to make sense of the world: we need to know how fast we’re going on the highway; we need to know how many calories we take in (or not); we need math to pass our SATs; heck, we need to make sense of how many bottles of dish soap Tim has and how many he gives away to understand just how ridiculous Tim is.

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Math matters, no matter its form.

#28

How Fast Could The London Eye Spin Like A Fan Before It Breaks?

How Fast Could The London Eye Spin Like A Fan Before It Breaks?

"Each pod is capable of holding 25 people at maximum safe capacity. Assuming each person can reasonably be 100kg, that means the safe load placed on any one pod is 2500kg.

The pods themselves weigh 10,000kg. The radius of the London eye is 67.5m.

Since at the bottom apex of the rotation the total force from centrifugal/centripetal force is equivalent to weight, a centrifugal force equal to 2500x9.81=24,525N is the maximum safe level.

F=MV2/R

V=sqrt(FR/M)

V=sqrt(24525x67.5/10,000)

V=12.9m/s

The pods could travel at approximately 28mph, or complete one rotation every 33 seconds, before the forces on the pods exceed safe levels. Theoretical maximum levels would be higher, but without stress testing the material cannot be precisely calculated."

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mhoulden
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It takes 45 minutes for one rotation. I remember someone getting confused and saying it span at 45 revolutions per minute. I wouldn't like to be in it at the time.

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#29

Did They Get Her Height Right?

Did They Get Her Height Right?

"Counter tops are usually 34 to 36in.

It was 5 phones to the top of counter 5.75"*5=28.75"

So I think they are off by a factor of 1.18 (34/28.75)

That would put her height around 5ft1in."

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#30

How Tall Is The Building For The Dog To Grow This Much In One Ride?

How Tall Is The Building For The Dog To Grow This Much In One Ride?

"Slow apartment sized elevators (which this looks like) go about 1mph. Let's say it takes an average of 10 months for a dog to go from puppy to a fully grown adult.

10 months = 305 days = 7320 hours.

Short elevator ride = 7320miles (close to the diameter of the earth)

Assuming dog is 16 years old in second photo:

16 years = 192 months = 5856 days = 140,544hours."

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Phil Vaive
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Why would this person assume the dog is SIXTEEN years old??? Dogs can grow that much in like a single year

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So, embrace math, and embrace the comment section while you’re at it by introducing some of your useless but not really math down below.

But if you can’t be bothered with reconfiguring your keyboard just to show off your 1337 math skills, then why not just dive deep into the subreddit itself or check out our previous article on the topic.

#31

Could This Be A Viable Weapon? How Hard Would It Hit?

Could This Be A Viable Weapon? How Hard Would It Hit?

"Definitely. Let's assume that you go to Walmart and get yourself a 70.8 gram bottle of extra fine doom. You then load up your hypervelocity shotgun with it and accelerate those grains to 99% of the speed of light.

By the lorentz factor, your glitter now contains 91 grams c2 of kinetic energy. By E=mc2 , you now have 8 terajoules of energy, or around 115 times the energy released during the Hiroshima explosion. If this glitter were an asteroid traveling at classical speeds, it would have the destructive potential of the asteroid that created Meteor Crater in Arizona. There are very few things that could withstand that. While the exact mechanics of what would happen depends heavily on the target, it's safe to say that all but the most hardened structures would not survive."

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David Paterson
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The glitter slows down remarkably quickly in air. So is this a fleet of ships or a fleet of space ships? If the ships of either type are in air then it wouldn't work. If the ships are in interstellar space then it would.

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#32

How Long Would It Actually Take?

How Long Would It Actually Take?

"It takes 42 adult-minutes to build a snowman.

It takes 63 child-minutes to build a snowman. Therefore, 1.5 child-minutes = 1 adult-minute.

If all 6 people are working together, they collectively do 3 adult-minutes and 3 child-minutes of work per minute, or (converting) 5 adult-minutes per minute.

Hence, it will take 42/5 = 8 minutes, 24 seconds to build the snowman."

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Janissary35680
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Premium
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

From Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary": (1) Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man. (2) One man can dig a post hole in sixty seconds. Therefore (3) Sixty men can dig one post hole in one second.

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#33

An Ancient Communication System Goes Around The World In Under A Day

An Ancient Communication System Goes Around The World In Under A Day

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#34

What Is The Answer To This?

What Is The Answer To This?

"There is a mathematical operation called concatenation (with symbol ||) that just combines two numbers. For example, 23 || 71 = 2371.

Therefore, 9 || 9 + 9 / 9 = 99 + 1 = 100"

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Multa Nocte
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Oh dear, I somehow just forgot about that rascally concatenation. Maybe next time . . .

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#35

How Long Would It Actually Take For A Monkey To Randomly Accidentally Write Out The Entire Works Of Shakespeare?

How Long Would It Actually Take For A Monkey To Randomly Accidentally Write Out The Entire Works Of Shakespeare?

"Shakespeare wrote 884,647 words, according to this article. The average word in the English language has 4.7 characters, plus spaces, so we'll assume he wrote 5042487 characters.

The average human types about 40 WPM = 200 CPM = 105,120,000 characters per year, which is about 100 times our Shakespeare set. I'll assume this is the amount a monkey can do.

Also assuming the monkey can only press one key at a time, and using lowercase letters, ,.-!?"() and space, there are 35 relevant keys on our idealised keyboard.

The probability for every set of 5,042,487 characters to be Shakespeare's works would be 1/35^(5042487). For comparison, there are about 10^80 atoms in the observable universe.

It would take about 35^(5042487) strokes, and this will not be significantly change whether we use 40WPM or 1 character per year, so we can say it will take more than 35^(5042487) years"

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Ross Shaw
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Humans are the infinite monkeys, and we've already produced the works of Shakespeare. ;)

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#36

How Many Fans Will Be Required?

How Many Fans Will Be Required?

"Basically it would be impossible. You would need enough fans to cover the radius of the hurricane, all spinning fast enough to blow winds of an equal strength of that hurricane, which a regular standing fan does not have the power to do"

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Zaphod
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Trump suggests 'nuking hurricanes' to stop them hitting America. Aug 26, 2019

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#37

I’m Too Tired To Figure This Out, Can Some Please Help?

I’m Too Tired To Figure This Out, Can Some Please Help?

"So, lets do this rigourously. First off, I'm using the average weight for European people (average of all, male and female). The toxicity data on humans is always a bit complicated for ethical reasons, therefore I can't use a LD50. Instead, I use the LDlo, the lowest dose of caffeine which ever caused death of an human. It is averaged over man and woman LDlo as both diverge quite significantly. Also, I'm on mobile, so please excuse the formatting.

m(average human, Europe) = 70.8 kg

LDlo(human) = 192 mg/kg

m(deadly dose) = 70.8 kg • 192 mg/kg ≈ 1.36 • 104 mg = 13.6 g

m(Caffeine in 237 mL Coffee) = 96 mg

m(deadly dose of coffee cups) = 1.36 • 104 mg / 96 mg ≈ 142 [cups]

Henceforth, this comment is wrong. Even if you make extraordinary strong coffee with 200 to 250 mg caffeine, the deadly dose would still be higher than 42 cups."

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Donkeywheel
Community Member
11 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

But more importantly, you’ll be incapacitated before being able to drink all these cups and thus you’ll never reach the deadly dose. That’s how you empirically define a (lethal) poison. Everything can kill you if you take too much of it. Everything. But for a poison to be a poison, the lethal dose needs to be small enough to be fully and quickly ingested.

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#38

Say If U Were To Actually Find The Surface Area, How Would One Find It?

Say If U Were To Actually Find The Surface Area, How Would One Find It?

"Assuming you’re given all the side lengths/angles you need, split up each face into a bunch of triangles/trapeziums and find the area of all of them and add them all up"

fightlolyes , twitter.com Report

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David Paterson
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11 months ago

This comment is hidden. Click here to view.

There is something radically wrong with the displayed shape. These shapes won't pack together to fill 3-D space.

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#39

[request] How Many Fights Did He Roughly Take To Cost The Company $21m?

[request] How Many Fights Did He Roughly Take To Cost The Company $21m?

"It says in an article he "accumulated 30 million miles". Whilst it's not clear if all of that was under the lifetime pass, you could presume that's what it means. If you know the AA air miles accumulation rate, you could possibly work out how many miles he flew, rather than the number of flights."

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Michael Largey
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The company may have not collected $21 million in revenue, but it didn't cost them that much. First, they operate at a profit, so the expense per seat is less than the revenue per seat. Second, every time he flew in a seat that otherwise would have gone unoccupied, the cost to the airline would have been just peanuts (figuratively and literally).

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#40

What's The Impact On His Health?

What's The Impact On His Health?

"1 tablsespoon of mayo is about 13.8g

this means with 308k likes is makes about 4250.4 kilos of mayo that he has to eat

the energy of those 308k ablespoons is about 120.7 gj or 120'736'000kj devided by the recomended energy intake of 8700kj a day the mayo alone wozld last you 13877 days which is 38 years."

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David Paterson
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

There's a huge variation in kj count between different brands of mayonnaise. Although the "average" energy in 100g of mayonnaise is 2,900 kj according to Wikipedia, the brand that I eat only has 575 kj per 100g. Reducing that 38 years to more like 7 years.

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#41

Can Someone Do The Math I Swear It’s 1.50?

Can Someone Do The Math I Swear It’s 1.50?

"Ok I see now. 1$ wasn't the og price. Feels like a flip to make you assume.

x is the original price

1 is an additional dollar on top of half the original price.

Therefore x = 0.5x + 1

adding the implied 1.0 to the X for clarity and format

Subtracting the half from both sides

1.0x = 0.5x + 1

-0.5x -0.5x

turns out to be

0.5x = 1

0.5x = 1.0

÷0.5 ÷0.5

1/1 ÷ 1/2 < side work for the right side 1/1 × 2/1 because two fractions divide is equal to the latter fraction flipping and multiplying 1 x 2 = 2

therefore x = 2

God damn I thought it was 1.5$ because I assumed 1 was the initial cost when really cost = (1 + 0.5price)"

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ChugChug
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Wrong wording. At least in my language. $1+half it's price. The "it's price" could be anything. So mathematically the sentence says 1x+0.5y=?, which is not enough information to solve.

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#42

For A Lottery At Work

For A Lottery At Work

"That looks to be a 16 oz (473 mL) wide mouth mason jar. Reese’s Pieces are about the same size as m&m’s (for which there is more data available). M&m’s range from 0.6-0.65 mL in volume, and have a packing density of about 68%.

pieces = jar volume * packing density / piece volume

So

473 mL * 0.68 / 0.6 mL = 536 pieces maximum

473 mL * 0.68 / 0.625 mL = 515 pieces average

473 mL * 0.68 / 0.65 mL = 495 pieces minimum"

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David Paterson
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

There are a range of different packing densities even for spheres. 0.59 to 0.6 for loose packing. 0.61 to 0.62 for poured random packing. 0.63 to 0.64 for close random packing. 0.74 for densest packing. That's the uncertainty just for spheres. For the nonspherical shape of Reese's Pieces it becomes even more difficult to get it correct. Which is why it's like a lottery.

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#43

Assuming You Knew The Solution, How Many Unique Passwords Would There Be?

Assuming You Knew The Solution, How Many Unique Passwords Would There Be?

"For a start, Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem was 129 pages long.

Wikipedia's summary of the proof is itself approximately 5,700 characters long.

So you wouldn't be able to fit that into a password which was just 732 to 942 characters long."

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David Paterson
Community Member
11 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Exactly. Password "difficulty" is just ridiculous. If your software only allows three tries before shutting down for the day, as it should. Then even a password containing 4 characters, all numerical digits, would take on average more than 3 years to crack. Because hackers use password lists, longer and more complicated passwords are not that much more dfificult to hack.

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#44

What's The Maths Behind This

What's The Maths Behind This

"This demonstrates the gamblers fallacy. It is the incorrect belief that, if a particular event occurs more frequently than normal during the past, it is less likely to happen in the future"

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Donkeywheel
Community Member
11 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

You would still have a 50% chance, but that would tend to prove that the 50% number is wrong

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#45

How Many Calories Would This Be?

How Many Calories Would This Be?

"A 14" pepperoni pizza from Dominos is 2240 calories, per their online calculator. 28" is 4x the area, so 8960. Divided by 2, that's 4480. 32 oz of full-sugar Coke is about 400 calories. So if you factor in inaccuracies with all the multiplication, you'd probably want to round it to 5000 per person"

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David Paterson
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

So, is that easy or not? Don't base the calculation on calories per person, that's stupid. Base it on volume of stomach and intestines. And in doing the challenge, make sure to force those drinks to go flat before drinking them.

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#46

Does This “Logic” Question Have A Simple Solution?

Does This “Logic” Question Have A Simple Solution?

"It is supposed to say “One* digit is repeated” not “Ones”.

The correct answer is 24,849."

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#47

How Long Would It Take To Figure Out The Code

How Long Would It Take To Figure Out The Code

"I am a locksmith.

Each button can only be pressed once. Pressing multiple buttons simultaneously is allowed. Not all buttons must be pressed.

There are over 1000 combinations, so you would think that it would take less than an hour to try them all if each attempt took 3 seconds."

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T Smith
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

it would help if you knew the number of digits in the code

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#48

Is This True?

Is This True?

"No. The Carbon Majors Report which this statistic comes from only looks at industrial emissions, not total emissions, excluding things like emissions from agriculture and deforestation. It's also assigning any emissions from downstream consumption of fossil fuels to the producer, which is like saying that the emissions from me filling up my car at a BP filling station are entirely BP's fault. These "scope 3" emissions from end consumption account for 90% of the fossil fuel emissions.

In addition, it's technically looking at producers, not corporations, so all coal produced in China counts as a single producer, while this will be mined by multiple companies."

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HelluvaHedgehogAlien
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Say what? A what filling station? And what fault? Now whenever I see BP I think it’s BoredPanda

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#49

How Much Ice Would It Take To Lower The Entire Ocean's Temperature By, Say, 10 Degrees Fahrenheit?

How Much Ice Would It Take To Lower The Entire Ocean's Temperature By, Say, 10 Degrees Fahrenheit?

"Dumping a big ice cube in the ocean will only postpone the inevitable, what you want to do is vent all the gas from the combustion engines directly upwards at noon, all at the same time from the same location, that will cause the Earth's orbit to be a little bit further away from the sun, that'll cool down the water. It would also make the orbit bigger, which would add an extra week to the year, I propose we call it Robot Party Week"

S0n0fs0m3thing Report

#50

How Many Lucky Holiday Goers Do You Think Could Fit On This Monstrosity?

How Many Lucky Holiday Goers Do You Think Could Fit On This Monstrosity?

"Using Kwaloon Walled City as a reference (which is apt given the image), you can have a stacked population density of 1.5 people per square meter. Due to the height here, I think we can triple that to 4.5 people per square meter.

That ship is vast. I can only estimate the dimensions poorly, but let’s go 150m by 1000m.

That’s 150 x 1000 x 4.5 people, or 675 000 people.

For reference, Peach Trees (from the amazing Dredd) had only 75 000 residents."

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Multa Nocte
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The answer is zero because if you actually ended up on this monstrosity you would automatically be unlucky.

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#51

How To Prove?

How To Prove?

"Just say by Peano's axioms. The later of which basically state that there is a successor function S(n)=n+1. So if you plug 1 in S(1)=1+1=2. It's just that simple. You can alternatively use the different set of axioms in 1910 Whitehead/Russell Principia Mathematica, rather grandiosly named for the book by Newton. That makes the problem harder, but some axioms needed for it can be proved using Peano's axioms, so there is really no point to doing things the hard way."

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David Paterson
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Good answer! For the Whitehead/Russell way, the proof is not just harder, it's darn near impossible.

#52

How Big Is The Second Ship?

How Big Is The Second Ship?

"The boat is approximately 19 pixels high to the deck and 64 long if I match it with a circle with r 1118 pixels that matches that curve. (I did this quickly in Paint, so it's a very rough estimate.)

The earth has a radius of 6371km = 1118p

Thus 5.69km = 1p

Boat length = 64p * 5.69 = 364.708km long

Boat Height = 19p * 5.69 = 108.272km high

So according to my rough calculations, the boat's deck would officially be in space.

The front sail is 42p high, so 239km"

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Ace
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Meanwhile, in the real world you can see the masts of a ship appearing over the horizon, when you're standing on another ship's bridge, from around 30 nautical miles.

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#53

Is This Calculation Correct?

Is This Calculation Correct?

"The age of the Earth is probably closer to 4.5 billion, but that's whatever.
Homo Sapiens has been around for around 300,000 years. Relative to the age of the Earth, that's 3 * 105 / (4.5 * 109) = 3/4.5 * 104 = 1/15,000 = 0.000666...

Taking 45 years and multiplying it by that factor gives us the scaled-down value. But let's first convert 45 years into seconds (screw leap years):
45 years = 45 y * 365 d/y * 24 h/d * 60 min/h * 60 s/min = 1,419,120,000 seconds
1,419,120,000 s * 1/15,000 = 94,608 s = 94,608 / 3,600 s/h = 26.28 h.
So that's already off.
Maybe they meant something else by "we have been here" - but I'd say the emergence of Homo Sapiens is the most reasonable interpretation.

Moving on, the industrial revolution began around 1760, that's 2023-1760 = 263 years ago.
Same method as before. First get the fraction of Earth's lifespan:
263 / (4.5 * 109) = 5.8444... * 10-8 =~ 1/17,110,266
Then use that as a factor on our 45 years in seconds:
1,419,120,000 s * 1/17,110,266 =~ 82.94 seconds.
A bit more than a minute, but close enough, I'd say.

Regarding the "50% of the world's forests", Wikipedia has the following to say:

About 31% of Earth's land surface is covered by forests at present. This is one-third less than the forest cover before the expansion of agriculture, with half of that loss occurring in the last century.

One-third less since the expansion of agriculture is not the same as 50% since the industrial revolution.
But then we could argue about the meaning of "destroyed"..."

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David Paterson
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11 months ago

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It's all right because the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere provides enough extra plant food for all that lost forest to grow back. That's how photosynthesis works.

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#54

Theoretically Could A File Be Compressed That Much? And How Much Data Is That?

Theoretically Could A File Be Compressed That Much? And How Much Data Is That?

"Theoretically yes, depending on what the data is like.

If I have a binary data file that's just 10^100 ones I can fully represent it with the words "ten raised to the power of one hundred ones". That's technically data compression in so far as a program could take it and use it to recreate the original file somewhere else. It's just not very useful because there was no actual information in a file that's all ones.

To get 55.4 yottabytes compressed down to 2.62 MB you'd need the data in the original file to contain almost no actual information or you'd need to use a compression so lossy that you'd lose almost all the information in the original file."

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David Paterson
Community Member
11 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

To be a bomb it doesn't need to contain information, it just has to overwrite files that do contain information. Which unzipping software won't allow you to do. So all he's done (if his claim is true) is create a zip file that can't be unzipped.

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#55

What Is Casey Missing?

What Is Casey Missing?

"There is an infinite number of answers, but in first grade I probably would’ve drawn two dots positioned arbitrarily in the fourth box."

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Phobrek
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'd go with 4 circles. Each box contains the sum of the ones preceding. But it could also just be 2. Very arbitrary.

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#56

How Big Would Someone Have To Be To Effectively Use This In Battle?

How Big Would Someone Have To Be To Effectively Use This In Battle?

"First of all the the longest Odachi is Haja-no-Ontachi, with a length of 465cm

Second of all the longest odachi (that I know of) used in combat was Taro tachi, a 288 cm long odachi wielded by Magara Naotaka who was 210 cm himself. So he would have to be 274.9 cm tall to wield a 377 cm odachi while having the hight to sword length ratio.

That would be 9 feat tall btw"

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#57

Which Would Give You The Most? (Ig For Simplicity The Person Lives Until 70 And Lives An Average Life)

Which Would Give You The Most? (Ig For Simplicity The Person Lives Until 70 And Lives An Average Life)

"~22,000 breaths per day = ~562.485 million breaths so around $140.6 million in 70 years

in 80 years the avg moderately active person takes ~216,262,500 steps, so we can average this to ~2.7m steps/year, and subtract the first year since most 0-12mo olds don't walk, especially not 2.7m steps in that year, we get $186.3m

$100/day for 70 years is $2.55m, by far the worst choice so far

Words vary from 2000-20,000 per day, and generally starts around year one. Assuming you want to maximize money, people can speak ~150WPM, and could realistically spend ~16 hours/day talking (assuming like 5 hours sleep and some amount of time eating where you can't really speak), so this could potentially be ~144,000 words/day, so assuming you never stop talking while awake for 69 years after you start, this comes out to ~$1.813 Billion. Realistically it's probably closer to $1 Billion because talking constantly for 16 hours a day would be very difficult.

making moves and breaking bonds are the wildcards....theoretically you could break billions of bonds if you, say, controlled a fission reactor, so there's potential for virtually unlimited money here."

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#58

How Many Triangles Are Actually In This Image?

How Many Triangles Are Actually In This Image?

"I got 24, 6 per layer.

3 for each side ( left-middle-right to the top), left and middle, right and middle, and the equilateral of the whole thing."

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Paul K. Johnson
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I get 24. From the top count down in every combination that creates a triangle. So four left, Four lef and center. Four left center and right. Just all possibilities with the left give us 12. Then four center. Four center and right. That's eight more. 20 Then four right. 24.

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#59

How High Should A Building Be If Cinemas Worked Like This?

How High Should A Building Be If Cinemas Worked Like This?

"Assuming this is only the credits, that a line of credit is onscreen for 5 seconds, and that there are 10 minutes of credits:

We get a total of 600/5 = 120 full screen heights. I don't really know how large a cinema screen is, but assuming 5 meters we get about 600 meters tall."

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David Paterson
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

120 full screen heights seems excessive. Come to think of it, ten minutes of credits seems excessive, too. Three minutes of credits seems more realistic, less for older films.

#60

What Answer Is Correct 120 Or 5??

What Answer Is Correct 120 Or 5??

"120 is correct. 5! or 5 factorial is also 120."

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Simon Chen
Community Member
11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Am i stupid? Arent you supposed to calculate 1+2 first, then 230 x3 would be 690, then 230 - 690... Would be - 460??? How is it 120? I am lost....

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