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In this Discussion
- 1234 August 2011
- ed_chigliak August 2011
- Leland August 2011
- lml__0_0__lml August 2011
- Log_Gary August 2011
- Loose_Thread August 2011
- MirandaJuly August 2011
- the_owls August 2011
- YoursTruly August 2011
How about the moon?
The moon is one of the best features of our planet. With its monthly transformations, cool reflected light, haughty distance, and secret tidal action (just to name a few of its awesome qualities) Luna provides a practical demonstration of poetic, "other-worldly" magic almost every day. We could probably get by without it but our experience here would be so much less.
The near quarter moon was so boss and bright in the twilight sky last night.
The near quarter moon was so boss and bright in the twilight sky last night.
Comments
IMAGINE A WORLD WITH NO MOON!
Best,
gary
~~maaannnnn onnnn the moooooon~~
MAN on the Run!"
This is how my yard and certain areas around my neighborhood sometimes become filled with saucers and other common objects.
I think I did the maths right to determine that 1 trillionth of the Earth's surface would be a square with each edge measuring 74.09 ft. (510 square meters).
About the size of a typical house lot in a city.
A trillionth!
IRL Earth's shape is noisier and more dynamic than an idealized sphere but not enough to throw off the size of a One Trillionth Sized Square by more than a few feet.
(Warning! Dumb number nerd out ahead. But there is a droll factoid about equilateral triangles offered as a punchline. I hear they are popular. Heh. Ok. Back into it....)
The number Google gave me for Earth's surface area was 510 million square kilometers. I believe there are 1 million square meters in a square kilometer (1,000 this way times 1,000 that way equals one thousand thousand, ie one million). A trillion is a million millions so that means the surface is more or less 510 trillion square meters. One trillionth of that is 510 square meters, right? Since the square root of 510 is 22-something, a square 22-ish meters one way and 22-ish meters the other way makes 510 square meters. I forget what the particular 22-ish number was for the meters, but it converted to 74.09 feet in another part of the Google.
This place http://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/geometry-solids/sphere.php told me that a sphere with an area of 510,000,000,000,000 square meters (5.1 x 10 to the 14th) would have a radius of 6,370,597 meters (6,370.5 kilometers).
And that's a super awesome number cuz it totally checks out with this rather detailed Wikipedia article about the radius of the Earth (IRL!!) .
Trillions and trillionths sound cool. They trill, right?
But I'm thinking this might be the right time to get in on the ground floor with quadrillions and their -nths. A quadrillionth is a thousandth of a trillionth.
So like, a thousandth of a 510 square meter area would be an area that was .51 square meters. There are an infinite number of shapes that could hold .51 square meters: could be a rectangle one meter long and .51 meters wide. Or, Ms. Google's square root machine tells me it could be a square with sides of .71414 meters (about 28 inches), or a circle with a diameter of .8059 meters (about 31 and 3/4ths inches) or, ahem... an equilateral triangle with sides measuring 1.08 meters (42 and 1/2 inches) ..... heh.
A quadrillionth of a planet, yo!
1/1,000,000,000,000,000 x Earth
Deal with it!
stupid moon