Some people are just more comfortable with good old familiar units like baby elephants per corgi. What do they even use for that in the metric system? Millihectares per decilitre or something? Whatever.
Soda is generally sold in 2L bottles here, with single liter bottles growing in popularity. Alcohol is usually sold by the ml, though in units like "fifth" and "handle."
Milk though, milk is sold in half-pints (not sure why they don't write cup), pints, quarts, half-gallon, or gallon. I like to pretend a quart is a shrinkflated liter though.
For non-metric users, three gallons of milk is probably more accessible. 400 kg is 880lb, which is roughly 12x as dense as water, which is the wild part (or it feels like it, that could be a totally normal density for stone, I’ve already put too much effort in for napkin math on a shitpost)
So palladium is has a density of 12.02, which it's price per ounce a little under 2000 CAD, that "corgi" is worth ~$27,846,525.99 CAD at current prices.
Unironically though more people really need to understand the utility of using highly composite numbers as units of measurement. It's not like the number 12 got picked randomly out of a hat.
The meteor was, according to NASA, about 2 feet across and weighed 1000 pounds. So their baby elephants are on the lighter side and their corgis are fairly normal size.
I'm going to assume a sphere, 60 centimeters in diameter, and a weight of 450 kg.
Volume of the sphere is 113000cm^3^, which gives us a density of 3,9g/cm^3^. That's heavier than most rocks (silicon at 2.3), but much lighter than iron (7.9).
And how malnourished the baby elephants are. I mean, there are 4 of them, that's a big litter for an elephant. Perhaps they aren't all suckling as much as is normal because the mother elephant isn't producing enough milk for 4. Maybe the mother elephant is sickly, after such a difficult birth. God, what if she even died?! The poor things will starve!
Corgis (adult) are pretty much one size, but are we talking newborn or year-old baby elephants? At what age does "baby" graduate to "toddler" in a species that stands and walks within an hour of birth?
I know it because this was circulated around the internet like 5 years ago when it happened, but the actual article was linked instead of just an image captcha. This is old news and an old "Americans will use pretty much anything but the metric system" type response.
According to some searching a banana is 100 - 150 cubic centimeters, while this meteor was .012 cubic meters, meaning roughly the volume of 80 - 120 average bananas (mashed). The meteor weighed 400kg while an (again, perfectly average) banana weighs 100 - 130g. This means that the weight of the meteor is between 3076 - 4000 bananas. So let's call it the weight of 3500 bananas in the space of 100, or roughly 35x the density of your average earth banana. (Lemmy bananaticians or bananologists, please correct me if I did bad math.)
You know well that Americans have only a very loose grip on units and reality. That's why they use imperial and "elephants per football field" like units.
No you see, everyone else in the world exclusively describes the world in accurate SI units, only Americans are dumbfuck enough to measure things in bullets per cheeseburger. Nobody else in the entire world will casually say "it's the size of a medium dog" because America bad.
after immigrating here, I've lived in America for 12 years and I still cannot get used to the whole thing with ounces, pints, gallons, and all the other weird af measurement units we use, like for my manufacturing job, instead of using cm, mm, or um, we have to juggle between using decimal numbers or fractions of an inch
IDK, I'm metric all the way, but this is pretty helpful for illustration, and I don't think 0.2m³ and 500kg would necessarily tell me something that corgis and elephants don't.
So if a baby elephant weighs 250 lbs (middle of the 200-300 lb range Google gave me) and a corgi is 11 inches tall (and that the extra corgi length is compensated for by the fact that we are assuming that this corgi is spherical), that's 1.43 lb/in^3. I've run out of time to do conversations, but this meteor was apparent at least part neutron star.
To be fair, if you pick your scales such that the numbers read ridiculous, nothing has an intuitive feeling. There's nothing much intuitive about a plane flying at an altitude of 16 thousand feet either, no matter how much they closetedly fetishise footstuff, in just about the same way there's nothing much intuitive about measuring the size of a star in meters.
Pilot here: in a weird way, a thousand feet is a unit. "Five thousand, Five hundred feet" is processed kind of like 5.5 altitudes. Bonus: traffic patterns are typically flown at 1000 feet AGL, so 1.0 altitudes, so pilots see that distance a lot.
78 Comments
kbal@fedia.io · 45 pts · 118d
Some people are just more comfortable with good old familiar units like baby elephants per corgi. What do they even use for that in the metric system? Millihectares per decilitre or something? Whatever.
starik@lemmy.zip · 31 pts · 118d
“0.012 m^3^ meteor weighing 400 kg hit Texas”
Boooooring.
Lodespawn@aussie.zone · 17 pts · 118d
you could also say 12L meteor weighing 400kg .. which is pretty cool, imagine 12 cartons of milk weighing the same as 4 fairly large people
Klear@quokk.au · 19 pts · 118d
1.5 fairly large people. You're talking to Americans, remember.
Lodespawn@aussie.zone · 6 pts · 118d
I mean they were probably already confused by the L and the cartons of milk ..
Hope@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 118d
Soda is generally sold in 2L bottles here, with single liter bottles growing in popularity. Alcohol is usually sold by the ml, though in units like "fifth" and "handle."
Milk though, milk is sold in half-pints (not sure why they don't write cup), pints, quarts, half-gallon, or gallon. I like to pretend a quart is a shrinkflated liter though.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 118d
For non-metric users, three gallons of milk is probably more accessible. 400 kg is 880lb, which is roughly 12x as dense as water, which is the wild part (or it feels like it, that could be a totally normal density for stone, I’ve already put too much effort in for napkin math on a shitpost)
HikingVet@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 117d
So palladium is has a density of 12.02, which it's price per ounce a little under 2000 CAD, that "corgi" is worth ~$27,846,525.99 CAD at current prices.
stupidcasey@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 118d
In your example of why the American system is bad resort to using the American system because nobody had any context?
Check mate atheists.
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub · 4 pts · 118d
So it's roughly the size of a bucket.
PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 118d
Well. A corgi-sized bucket, anyway. Not one of the bigger ones, great dane or so.
titanicx@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 118d
Couple of buckets if it's corgi size.
cattywampas@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 118d
Photonic@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 118d
I mean, it’s basic knowledge isn’t it? If you know e=mc^2^ you’d better also know (be)^4^=c
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 118d
Billaneters
Apytele@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 118d
Unironically though more people really need to understand the utility of using highly composite numbers as units of measurement. It's not like the number 12 got picked randomly out of a hat.
CharcoalRushmoore@reddthat.com · 14 pts · 118d
What will we call a half ton? George Washington: 4 baby elephants.
Ezergill@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 117d
The most fucked unit of measurement I've seen is your mom.
Railcar8095@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 118d
Is nobody bothered about how un-corgi-sized the meteor on the picture is?
fuck_u_spez_in_particular@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 118d
AI is a curse...
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 118d
nah, we understand that a lot of material burns off
zxqwas@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 118d
Had to check that it's actually plausible.
Assuming a corgi is 0.4m long, 0.3m tall and 0.2m wide and that a baby elephant weighs 120kg that gives the meteor a density of 20000kg/m³.
There are only a few elements denser than that, but it's possible.
Hoimo@ani.social · 6 pts · 118d
The meteor was, according to NASA, about 2 feet across and weighed 1000 pounds. So their baby elephants are on the lighter side and their corgis are fairly normal size.
I'm going to assume a sphere, 60 centimeters in diameter, and a weight of 450 kg. Volume of the sphere is 113000cm^3^, which gives us a density of 3,9g/cm^3^. That's heavier than most rocks (silicon at 2.3), but much lighter than iron (7.9).
CharcoalRushmoore@reddthat.com · 5 pts · 118d
Wouldn’t it just be iron?
zxqwas@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 118d
Possibly, astrophysics is usually about order of magnitude and while iron is only 8000kg/m³ it's within error margins.
CannonFodder@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 118d
And of course, it depends on how chubby the corgi is.
Agent641@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 118d
And how malnourished the baby elephants are. I mean, there are 4 of them, that's a big litter for an elephant. Perhaps they aren't all suckling as much as is normal because the mother elephant isn't producing enough milk for 4. Maybe the mother elephant is sickly, after such a difficult birth. God, what if she even died?! The poor things will starve!
HikingVet@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 118d
Considering elephants birth one at a time after like 18 months...
zxqwas@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 118d
I assumed a very rectangular shape.
Triumph@fedia.io · 4 pts · 118d
Assume a rectangular corgi.
rbos@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 118d
A spherical corgi is just a corgi, so that really just complicates it.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 117d
iron and iridium, and nickel probably.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 118d
Corgis (adult) are pretty much one size, but are we talking newborn or year-old baby elephants? At what age does "baby" graduate to "toddler" in a species that stands and walks within an hour of birth?
SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 118d
Asking the real questions
merc@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 118d
20,000kg/m³ is 20g/cm³, and only a couple of elements are that dense. But it's not reasonable that a meteor is solid uranium, platinum, gold or osmium.
It's probably mostly iron. But, but that would mean only 2 baby elephants per corgi, not 4.
JuliaSuraez@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 118d
Americans will measure anything except use metric 😂
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de · 8 pts · 118d
That clipping is from a European publisher. Lol
pyre@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 117d
idk how you know that but even so, the news is from Texas which means they're probably just relaying a report from a US agency.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 117d
I know it because this was circulated around the internet like 5 years ago when it happened, but the actual article was linked instead of just an image captcha. This is old news and an old "Americans will use pretty much anything but the metric system" type response.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -2 pts · 118d
Americans can work as editors for European publishers 🤷🏻
SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip · 2 pts · 117d
The editor was certainly no true Scotsman.
sundray@lemmus.org · 8 pts · 118d
Mixing units of measurement here; corgis are metric dogs.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 117d
Are you sure? Aren't they Bri'ish, so they'd be gallons, but weird slightly small gallons?
gary215@thelemmy.club · 6 pts · 118d
I need a banana for scale.
crank0271@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 117d
According to some searching a banana is 100 - 150 cubic centimeters, while this meteor was .012 cubic meters, meaning roughly the volume of 80 - 120 average bananas (mashed). The meteor weighed 400kg while an (again, perfectly average) banana weighs 100 - 130g. This means that the weight of the meteor is between 3076 - 4000 bananas. So let's call it the weight of 3500 bananas in the space of 100, or roughly 35x the density of your average earth banana. (Lemmy bananaticians or bananologists, please correct me if I did bad math.)
BandanaBug@piefed.social · 5 pts · 118d
Would be a great fit here
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 117d
You know well that Americans have only a very loose grip on units and reality. That's why they use imperial and "elephants per football field" like units.
doingthestuff@lemy.lol · 4 pts · 117d
Someone's clearly below average on bald eagles per gunshot fired and, frankly, I think a little jealous.
smuuthbrane@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 118d
So that's, what, around 7 loaves of Wonder Bread weighing the same as one and a half gorillas?
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 118d
The hate for the french is everywhere 😓😓😓
Exatron@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 117d
This seems worse.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10610491/Asteroid-half-size-giraffe-strikes-Earth-coast-Iceland.html
voidsignal@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 118d
you have to adapt to the target audience.. look where that asteroid hit.
SethTaylor@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 117d
You mean you can fit 4 baby elephants inside a corgy? Damn...
ThunderQueen@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 117d
PhoenixDog@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 117d
If you try hard enough you can fit anything inside a Corgi.
SethTaylor@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 117d
Neutron star corgi
tux0r@snac.rosaelefanten.org · 3 pts · 118d
Fahrenheit is still saner than Celsius for outside temperatures.
diabetic_porcupine@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 118d
Tell me your from America without telling me your from America
glitchdx@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 117d
I hate to be that guy, but
your is possessive.
you're is you are.
SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip · 4 pts · 118d
This is apparently from The Jerusalem Post.
DioramaOfShit@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 118d
So like America?
SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip · 2 pts · 117d
A headline created by an Israeli media outlet, aimed culturally at Britons, and run on various European sites? Much American.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 117d
No you see, everyone else in the world exclusively describes the world in accurate SI units, only Americans are dumbfuck enough to measure things in bullets per cheeseburger. Nobody else in the entire world will casually say "it's the size of a medium dog" because America bad.
vinyl@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 117d
after immigrating here, I've lived in America for 12 years and I still cannot get used to the whole thing with ounces, pints, gallons, and all the other weird af measurement units we use, like for my manufacturing job, instead of using cm, mm, or um, we have to juggle between using decimal numbers or fractions of an inch
rustydrd@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 118d
IDK, I'm metric all the way, but this is pretty helpful for illustration, and I don't think 0.2m³ and 500kg would necessarily tell me something that corgis and elephants don't.
IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 118d
So if a baby elephant weighs 250 lbs (middle of the 200-300 lb range Google gave me) and a corgi is 11 inches tall (and that the extra corgi length is compensated for by the fact that we are assuming that this corgi is spherical), that's 1.43 lb/in^3. I've run out of time to do conversations, but this meteor was apparent at least part neutron star.
rugburn@fedinsfw.app · 4 pts · 118d
Am I wrong for wanting to live in a world with spherical corgis?
marcos@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 118d
Yes, you are.
Look at a corgi. Just look. Why would you want to change it?
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 117d
richardwallass@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 118d
Elephants from Asia or Africa ? How old babies ?
Arachnidbrilliant@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 117d
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 1 pts · 118d
How many gumballs is that, Bluejay?
veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -1 pts · 118d
Amerikkkans (well, Tekkkans) will do anything but use the Metric system.
Telodzrum@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 118d
veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 0 pts · 118d
I know right? It's like they're toddlers who never grew up, except in this case they never grew out of Obscurantism.
cattywampas@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 118d
People clown on these kinds of headlines as if the average metric user has an intuitive feeling of what size 0.012 cubic meters is.
derg@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 118d
That’s 12 liters, or about 3 gallons.
Hope@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 118d
So about the size of my bathroom trash can, or the size of my mother-in-law's corgi, then.
FatVegan@leminal.space · 2 pts · 118d
Tell the diameter
veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 118d
To be fair, if you pick your scales such that the numbers read ridiculous, nothing has an intuitive feeling. There's nothing much intuitive about a plane flying at an altitude of 16 thousand feet either, no matter how much they closetedly fetishise footstuff, in just about the same way there's nothing much intuitive about measuring the size of a star in meters.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 117d
Pilot here: in a weird way, a thousand feet is a unit. "Five thousand, Five hundred feet" is processed kind of like 5.5 altitudes. Bonus: traffic patterns are typically flown at 1000 feet AGL, so 1.0 altitudes, so pilots see that distance a lot.
Astronut@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 118d
Listen, I was raised on the banana scale so all this talk is foreign to me!
SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip · 4 pts · 118d
Several Texan articles I found about this meteorite used the metric system.