ask. be afraid.
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Left Turning Vehicles Erin and I were pondering this one together. Left turn from where? This is one of those yellow traffic signs that I just ignore. Sure, I probably cared about it when I was 16, but now? It kind of begs the question, right? Left turning from where? Here is the funny thing. Erin was thinking it might be cars turning left into opposing traffic, warning us that someone may cut across traffic. I, on the other hand, generally thought the signed referred to people already in traffic making left turns. In retrospect, all three are likely wrong. After all, you can clearly see all of these events...that is, if you are paying any attention. The only reason this kind of sign makes sense is if it means traffic turning left into your lane. Maybe? Because then they are driving slow? Yeah, I'm reaching. Give me my tax dollars back, dumb sign.
Texas & Iced Tea So one day Erin and I are driving down the road and she asks, "So, what are you thinking?" Well, that was the answer. Yes, this actually happened. In fact, it is the inspiration for this page. Erin likes to share this discussion, too. When she does, people look at me a little differently. I don't think that's a good thing. However, it's become such a topic of discussion, I am now compelled to actually do the calculation.
Coming soon? What was I thinking? The answer wasn't too hard to derive...so let's get to it!
First, we need to know how big Texas is. Texas is approximately 268,581 square miles (according to Wikipedia).
Next, we need to be a little clearer about what we are calculating. If we "pour out iced tea" - well, how thick of a layer would that be? After all, we can't calculate how many gallons (a volume) without knowing the length and width (area) and height (or depth). One of my wise guys friends asked about the tea absorbing into the ground. Why stop there? I mean, we probably have to deal with evaporation and buildings and sewages systems... As you can tell, the answer can get quite absurd if we don't just draw lines somewhere.
Let's shoot for a depth of one inch.
 The answer is a REALLY big number: 4.7 trillion gallons! Okay...that's crazy. Federal deficit crazy.
So, I started thinking about the other "extreme" - what if the layer of tea was just one molecule thick? Try Googling "how thick is tea." Absurd. Since tea is mostly water, I just assumed the average "thickness" of a water molecule and I didn't really worrry about molecule packing or anything. Reworking the math a little (instead of multiplying by 1 inch, we multiply by 2.7 Angstroms) and we get roughly 51,000 gallons.
Yes...that's much better. Of course, at one molecule thick, that would probably evaporate before it even hit the ground.
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Since I created this page inspired by my wife asking, "so, what are you thinking," she seems to have stopped asking the question. This page is now just filled with the really random stuff that I think about. This page is dedicated to the times when I am thinking something profound...or inane. |