Unusual/Astonishing facts post....

[Podunkadunk]

I just read online that 1" of rain on 1 acre of land = 27,154 gallons!

That amazed me!

Here's the proof:
Rain, a valuable resource

Anyone else got any interesting, out of the ordinary tidbits...?

Oh yeah, please back it up with some documentation, if you can find it.

 

[EddieWalker]

The term "2 bits" for a quarter and sometimes in old westerns always interested me.

It comes from the California gold rush days when there was no government, or official currency. The miners had their gold made into a wire, and a "bit" was a certain length of that wire. "2 bits" was just twice the length of "1 bit."

Eddie

 

[Farmwithjunk]

Over 75% of facts posted on the internet are made up. Is this one?

 

[Kendall69]

Also origin of Two bits...

What is "Two Bits"?

Two Bits

 

[TedLaRue]

Challenge someone to fold a tarp in half 12 times. Wager a little something on it if you want to be cruel.

If you could fold a large 30' x 30' blue tarp (the thinnest (6 mil) poly tarp) in half 12 times, the folded tarp would be less than 6" x 6" (that's inches), and it would be about 2 feet thick if all the air were pressed out of it.

 

[TedLaRue]

If a tomato which is 2" in diameter weighs 4 oz, how much does a tomato which is 4" in diameter weigh?

Most people are surprised to find that the 4" tomato would weigh two pounds.

These aren't "facts" from the Web. They can be proven mathematically. If anyone's interested, I can provide pretty simple proofs.

 

[TedLaRue]

For welders, or anyone else:

Suppose the Earth is a perfect sphere, and you have a steel band wrapped tightly around it. Suppose you cut that band and weld in an additional 32 foot section with your new Miller. If this new band is centered around the earth, how far above the surface would the band be? Could you crawl under it? Could you slide a piece of cardboard under it? Could you slide a 0.001" shim under it?

I'll leave this unanswered for now. But I'm pretty sure several posters here can come up with the correct answer.

 

[cp1969]

if it's touching on the far side of the earth, Manute Bol could walk under it. (32/pi= 10ft+)

 

[orezok]

If you assume that the circumference of the earth is 24,000 miles, then the diameter increase of your band will be just over 10'.

24000x5280/3.14159=40107079.54 feet. Add 32' to circumference and diameter is 40107089.72.

Difference is 10.19 feet

 

[jdbower]

Nah, your numbers are off. The world is actually 6" in diameter, it just looks bigger because we're so close. That means that the circumference in 0.5*Pi or about 1.5'. Add 32 to that and divide by Pi and you get a new diameter of 10.7' or so. That means that adding 32' gives you a little over 10' of diameter increase. Wait a minute...

Of course, if you center the band it's about 5' above the Earth on either side, high enough to limbo under but I'd have to duck. At least it would be if we didn't all know that the Earth is really flat and not round...