Something for a Sunday Morning

[mschrank]

Here's one for you engineers...

If member "RayintheUK" were to chime in on this thread, what year would he say is "1 billion seconds ago?"

[stewchi]

Reminds me of my buddy in Engineering school, who for an assignment determined how many beers you would have to drink to have enough energy to peddle a bike to the moon. Sounds ridiculous (I suppose the premises is) but it was about 15 pages long, documenting all the assumptions and calculations. He got an A on it.

Or my other favorite when we got into the real wacky advanced mathematics. That 1+1 = 3 for extremely large values of 1.

[Hoyden]

250 thousand million is still a lot of money. I too am moving to Burbon St. there should be enough for a brewery in ther some where

[JonK]

I'm glad I'm not the only Geek...

...engineer that grabbed their calculator when I saw the original post. Nevertheless, these things are instructive to give a sense of size for the enormous numbers that are tossed around every day.

How about this one:

A million seconds ago was just about last week...
A billion seconds ago Nixon was resigning the White House...
A trillion seconds ago a man was picking up stone tools for the first time ...

Now, if congress approves the administration's requested increase in the debt ceiling by $780 million, as they almost certainly have to, the national debt will reach $9 trillion. It stood at $6 trillion at the end of Clinton's run, so just during this administration's tenure, the entire national debt will have increased by 50%! Glad that I don't have to make the interest payments on that one.....wait a minute...yes I (we) do!

[leehljp]

Here's one for you engineers...

If member "RayintheUK" were to chime in on this thread, what year would he say is "1 billion seconds ago?"

You are right! A British billion and an American billion are not the same.

[jziegler]

You are right! A British billion and an American billion are not the same.

Although, checking this out on Wikipedia, that no longer appears to be the case. In the 80s, the British government adopted the "short scale" that we americans have always used for all of their government documents. So, it would appear that short scale is pretty common over there too.

-Jim

[Copper]

Hey, we're engineers. We're checkin' facts and takin' names.

I might add, we're used to big numbers.
To me, a billion bytes (a gigabyte) is merely 1/1000th of a terabyte.

An ampere is 602 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 electrons per second.

Hey, if we're getting all accurate on things you should say that an ampere is

602 214 150 000 000 000 000 000 plus or minus 100 000 000 000 000 000

this is Avagadro's number and I use it all the time to determine the number of molecules in a mole (no, not the brown thing on your arm) You engineers and your "rounding off"

[jdschulteis]

Hey, if we're getting all accurate on things you should say that an ampere is

602 214 150 000 000 000 000 000 plus or minus 100 000 000 000 000 000

this is Avagadro's number and I use it all the time to determine the number of molecules in a mole (no, not the brown thing on your arm) You engineers and your "rounding off"

I've heard variations on this one before. Since I couldn't remember exactly how it went, I googled up http://www.wilk4.com/humor/humore30.htm and shamelessly stole this:

A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were asked to review this mathematical problem. In a high school gym, all the girls in the class were lined up against one wall, and all the boys against the opposite wall. Then, every ten seconds, they walked toward each other until they were half the previous distance apart. The mathematician, physicist, and engineer were asked, " When will the girls and boys meet?"
The mathematician said, " Never."
The physicist said, " In an infinite amount of time."
The engineer said, " Well... in about two minutes, they'll be close enough for all practical purposes."

[LCHIEN]

Hey, if we're getting all accurate on things you should say that an ampere is

602 214 150 000 000 000 000 000 plus or minus 100 000 000 000 000 000

this is Avagadro's number and I use it all the time to determine the number of molecules in a mole (no, not the brown thing on your arm) You engineers and your "rounding off"

Plus or minus 100 thousand trillion and you call that accurate?