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Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Size Matters

Several of us were looking at a jigsaw puzzle of the world tonight after church. It's 32 inches wide. I made some smart remark about wondering what the "scale" was between the puzzle and the real planet earth.

Teachable moment: never wonder aloud about something like that in the presence of a proud member of The United States Air Force (AKA: Adam Page.) I received the following mathematical equation on my facebook page about an hour later.

Puzzle Diameter = 32 inches
Earths Diameter at the equator 7,926.28 miles
First convert miles to feet 7926.28 X 5280 = 41,850,758.4
Then feet to inches 41850758.4 X 12 = 502,209,100.8 is earth’s diameter in inches at the equator
So the scale of the puzzle is 32/502209100.8 OR 1/15,694,034.4ths approximately

I present this to you simply because the world needs to know it ain't no big deal.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you actually needed to use the circumference not the diameter. Plus the world is spherical and not flat. So you might want to use a Lambert Conical Transform to calculate area and then calculate scale.

Just thinking...

Ron said...

Do as you wish, anonymous. As for me, I've noticed that the air force usually get where they plan on getting so I'm sticking with them.