Math in recent emails

[magid]

"[...] the new baby, at birth, was 1.6 billion barn megaparsecs per hectare long, and had a mass of 44 thousand Joules squared per mega-electron-volt."¹

" 3. For any point in the sukkah, draw two perpendicular lines through that point. For that point in the sukkah to be kosher, two of the four ends must intersect a kosher wall, and a third must intersect either a wall or a line drawn as an imaginary continuation of a real wall."²

And people ask when they'll ever use this stuff :-).


¹ A birth announcement to the Tremont St. list.
² Sukkah requirements (by the rabbi) to the Harvard Hillel orthodox minyan list, along with an offer to check out any sukkot.

Comments

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

Hold on..Wouldn't joules squared per volt be in the wrong units? What's their ratio for converting energy into matter?

[magid.livejournal.com]

I shamefully admit I'm pretty horrible at a lot of science (at least, how it was taught didn't fit how I learn, or something). So, quite possibly wrong.

[cnoocy]

Isn't c² the standard?

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

Good point. If they're assuming E=MC², we've got E, and C is a constant. So just solve for M, and there's your baby!

[geekosaur]

Electron-volt, not volt; speaking in terms of units it's coulombs * volts. But as I work it (off the top of my head) that still gives you joules squared per joule. (eV units = coulomb*(joule/sec)/(coulomb/sec) = joule). So if you drop the "squared" on the first part, the units should conform.

(whee, math geekery first thing in the morning. take it with a large grain of salt :)

[ceo]

OK, this is just terrifying.

I don't know what a barn megaparsec is, but Google does.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Heh. So, is that a reasonably average length for a baby?

("Well, she's smaller than a barn, and smaller than a bread box... if it's a large bread box.")

[geekosaur]

help:506 Z$ grep barn /usr/share/lib/unittab 
barn                   1-28 m2

(that's 1*10**-28 IIRC)

Funny, I'd imagine a "barn" to be large, rather than small; must be the farmer's viewpoint instead of the city slicker's viewpoint. :)