Archive for May, 2008
Friday, May 30th, 2008
In past posts, I've talked about how heavy things are, but what about how light they are?
Over the Memorial Day Weekend, my mom and stepdad visited to celebrate her birthday, and as I was describing this little experiment in blogging to her, she suggested I use "light as a feather" ...
Posted in Volume, Weight/Mass | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
With gas prices going through the roof, many people have contemplated buying a new car, particularly a gas/electric hybrid, to drastically improve their gas mileage and lower their gas bill. But are the savings people are getting really all they're cracked up to be?
Don't get me wrong. I'm ...
Posted in Distance, Monetary Value | No Comments »
Friday, May 23rd, 2008
Previously I discussed a letter from reader Scott about parts per billion, and we had plenty of fun discovering that the allowable level of lead in drinking water was equal to about a shot glass in an olympic size pool. But reader Scott had brought up parts per billion ...
Posted in Area, Distance | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
Over the past few days, friends have been asking me "have you seen this measuring cup?" They were all abuzz about this new gag measuring cup that featured markings on it for things like "20,000 grains of rice" or "volume of half a human brain." I knew I ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, May 19th, 2008
In the "Molecules of Caffeine" post, I calculated the number of caffeine molecules in a can of Mountain Dew. This lead reader Scott to e-mail me about the concept of parts per billion. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency has set their "action level" for lead in drinking ...
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 16th, 2008
Check out that snazzy new calculator to your left, baby. Sleek, stylish, and oh-so embeddable. Embeddable? Yes, I've set it up on the new calculators page so there's a small block of code underneath each calculator, easy to copy and paste into your blog or web site ...
Posted in Calculators, Distance | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Recently in my travels, I was alerted to the upcoming Space Elevator Conference happening in Redmond, Washington in July with Microsoft as a major sponsor. Of course, the moment I read "space elevator," being a proud member of generation X, the theme for "The Great Space Coaster" started going ...
Posted in Distance, Length | 7 Comments »
Monday, May 12th, 2008
Gas stations in the USA have been selling gas at prices ending in 9/10ths of a cent for decades. Depending on who you ask, the practice dates back to the Great Depression or farther, and there are varying reasons given for it. The most often agreed-upon reason for ...
Posted in Content, Monetary Value, Time, Volume, Weight/Mass | 2 Comments »
Friday, May 9th, 2008
A Quick Announcement: Last Friday's "Your Weight In..." calculator has been updated to calculate the value of your weight in Spam, foie gras, and Snausages. This is in addition to your weight in gold, crude oil, lard, pretzels, pennies, and Hummers.
And Now Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming... ...
Posted in Content, Food & Diet, Weight/Mass | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
As the old saying goes, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. To your left is a screen cap of a pharmaceutical ad from Sanofi Pasteur. It says: "Most hospitalizations and nearly all deaths in the US from whooping cough (pertussis) are reported in ...
Posted in Statistics | 1 Comment »
Monday, May 5th, 2008
On Friday, I created a calculator where you could find out how much you're worth if you're worth your weight in gold, pretzels, crude oil, etc.
It occurred to me that some people might be a little embarrassed to put in their real weight. A bit silly since it's not ...
Posted in Energy, Food & Diet | No Comments »
Friday, May 2nd, 2008
We've all heard someone say some other person was worth his/her weight in gold. If you haven't, you've probably been living in a cave. But if you were worth your weight in gold, how much would you be worth? Well, you can try our new handy dandy calculator below ...
Posted in Monetary Value, Weight/Mass | 3 Comments »
