Science that makes you cringe

[ian]

Yes, ice cream at that temperature can cause a severe sinus headache.

[T42]

It were 0°A when I were a lad.

[Giraffe]

Amount of silt to be dredged given in cubic tons. um.

[mrcharly-YHT]

0.33kW of instantaneous power, enough to briefly sustain around 750 homes

Blimey, those are energy-efficient homes.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220511-can-gravity-batteries-solve-our-energy-storage-problems

[Kim]

It's now saying 250kW, which seems more reasonable.  In as much as "sustaining homes" is a useful measure of anything.

[Mr Larrington]

What's that in 1-bar electric fires

["use of the bar is Considered Harmful" - Ed.]

[mrcharly-YHT]

It's now saying 250kW, which seems more reasonable.  In as much as "sustaining homes" is a useful measure of anything.

So enough to turn the lights on in each house and keep a fridge running.

[Kim]

It's now saying 250kW, which seems more reasonable.  In as much as "sustaining homes" is a useful measure of anything.

So enough to turn the lights on in each house and keep a fridge running.

*peers at monthly electrosity stats*

Power: Average:488.64W Max:5990.20W Min:0.00W  (Ignore that last one, the monitoring got unplugged.)

So yeah.  Not enough to keep our house running.  But we're heavy users with a lot of computer equipment, I can imagine many people are well under a third of a kW.  No idea how many really heavy users there are (big families, storage heaters, hot tubs, etc.), and where the national average might be.  Possibly too much to hope that they've got that figure from somewhere sensible...

ETA: I note Ripple are using 2900kWh/year as their 'medium' average consumption.  That's 331.1W.

Obviously peak demand complicates things.  But it's not like you're really trying to power a village with an electric crane anyway...

On the gripping hand, unless you're comparing electricity bills, who has an intuitive sense of how much power a typical home uses on average?  At least 1-bar electric fires are meaningful.

[ian]

In addition to long division, to this day I can't my times-tables either. I can't say the omission of either has really held me back. Of course, if I'm ever in a potentially cataclysmic situation where the fate of the world is in my hands and only way to divert the comet or defuse the gigatonic nuclear bomb that's about to shatter a tectonic plate is for me to instantly respond to what's five sevens and the how many 42s are there in 53,256, you may refer me to this post.

[Feanor]

Yea, even as someone who can do Hard Maths, mental arithmetic is not a Thing I can Do, nor need to do.

The only feat of mental arithmetic I can do at party-grade is the conversion of miles to Km.
I can mentally do the x1.6 in my head, and produce an answer to 1 decimal place.

There is a trick, of course.
Instead of trying to multiply by 1.6, multiply by 16 then divide by 10.
Both of these are much simpler operations.

Multiplying by 16 is simply doubling four times.
That's not so hard mentally.
Then, dividing by 10 is just a decimal point shift.

So, for example, 12 miles:
Double four times: 12 > 24, 48, 96, 192
Divide by 10.
Answer is 19.2k

[ElyDave]

Or add a half and the add a tenth

12 + 6 + 1.2 = 19.2

[citoyen]

The only feat of mental arithmetic I can do at party-grade is the conversion of miles to Km.
I can mentally do the x1.6 in my head, and produce an answer to 1 decimal place.

There is a trick, of course.

Being a UK-based audaxer, converting miles to kilometres has become second nature. I don't even need to do the sums any more.

[felstedrider]

It's now saying 250kW, which seems more reasonable.  In as much as "sustaining homes" is a useful measure of anything.

So enough to turn the lights on in each house and keep a fridge running.

*peers at monthly electrosity stats*

Power: Average:488.64W Max:5990.20W Min:0.00W  (Ignore that last one, the monitoring got unplugged.)

So yeah.  Not enough to keep our house running.  But we're heavy users with a lot of computer equipment, I can imagine many people are well under a third of a kW.  No idea how many really heavy users there are (big families, storage heaters, hot tubs, etc.), and where the national average might be.  Possibly too much to hope that they've got that figure from somewhere sensible...

ETA: I note Ripple are using 2900kWh/year as their 'medium' average consumption.  That's 331.1W.

Obviously peak demand complicates things.  But it's not like you're really trying to power a village with an electric crane anyway...

On the gripping hand, unless you're comparing electricity bills, who has an intuitive sense of how much power a typical home uses on average?  At least 1-bar electric fires are meaningful.

Ofgem use 2,900kWh pa.

They brought it down from 3,200 not long ago as general domestic consumption had dropped.   We use about that but we're not heavy consumers of power.   Gas is a different story.

[ian]

Pretty sure I got a multiple drubbing for not learning my times-tables. I was a bit of a thicko so I suspect I didn't put much effort into the process (to be fair, I never had the aptitude for numbers, I have a crayon-based mentality). It was the rote thing, you had to chant them, like you were trying to summon some lower-order maths demon into the classroom. Possibly we did, I'm not sure as by that point I had been despatched to the punishment desk in the corridor.

[drossall]

My memory is of "bond tests" (in a standard state primary school). We'd be given sheets of ten (I think, may have been twenty) multiplications, and race to be the first to complete the sheet correctly. The aim - and it seems, well over 50 years later, to have worked - was to get to a point where we knew anything up to 12*12 without really thinking about it.

[matthew]

In addition to long division, to this day I can't my times-tables either. I can't say the omission of either has really held me back. Of course, if I'm ever in a potentially cataclysmic situation where the fate of the world is in my hands and only way to divert the comet or defuse the gigatonic nuclear bomb that's about to shatter a tectonic plate is for me to instantly respond to what's five sevens and the how many 42s are there in 53,256, you may refer me to this post.

1,268 

(click to show/hide)

not all mental maths but obviously you can take 1,000*42 out to leave 11,256/42. Take out the factors of 2 and 3 to leave 1876/7 at which point I resorted to pen and paper to get the remaining 268.

[Kim]

The aim - and it seems, well over 50 years later, to have worked - was to get to a point where we knew anything up to 12*12 without really thinking about it.

Stopping at 12 always seemed a bit daft.  Especially given how much time I spend counting in 16s^[1].


_{[1] The great thing about computers is they save you from having to do lots of tedious arithmetic.  Allegedly.}

[drossall]

Don't think maths had quite caught up at that point. A few years later, though, I was doing bases in arithmetic. My Dad, a chartered engineer, had to work hard to catch up with the "new maths" so that he could help with my homework.

Roll on a couple of decades and I, with a physics degree, was struggling with what my kids were doing in their school maths.

[orienteer]

The aim - and it seems, well over 50 years later, to have worked - was to get to a point where we knew anything up to 12*12 without really thinking about it.

Stopping at 12 always seemed a bit daft.  Especially given how much time I spend counting in 16s^[1].

12 times table important for working in £, shillings and pence. I still have it imprinted in my mind that a third of a pound is 6s/8d. A third in new pence is impossible!


_{[1] The great thing about computers is they save you from having to do lots of tedious arithmetic.  Allegedly.}

[Kim]

I've mentioned before how I thought that new pence were the plastic ones you had in school for maths lessons...

[TheLurker]

Don't think maths had quite caught up at that point. A few years later, though, I was doing bases in arithmetic.

Odd thing.  Early primary 7, Scotland.  I'm doing simple binary arithmetic and using the metric system.  Six months later in an English primary school I'm trying to work out WTF rods, poles perches and bushels are.  I wish I was exaggerating for comic effect, but I'm not.

[ElyDave]

Don't think maths had quite caught up at that point. A few years later, though, I was doing bases in arithmetic. My Dad, a chartered engineer, had to work hard to catch up with the "new maths" so that he could help with my homework.

Roll on a couple of decades and I, with a physics degree, was struggling with what my kids were doing in their school maths.

Your dad was "doing bases" but base 12 (for £,s,d) and probably other sorts of odd imperial nonsensical bases, rather than those you were doing.

[drossall]

If I remember rightly, he'd grown up, even in engineering, with traditional (not decimal) fractions, and had to convert those. The old currency doesn't really do bases, as you count first in 12s, then in 20s, and then in tens. But you can do the odd 5s (crowns), 21s (guineas) and so on. It's all rather random for a computer to handle!

[Basil]

Anyone remember those exercise books that had the back cover with lists of chains, rods, troy weight, cwt, etc

[ElyDave]

Anyone remember those exercise books that had the back cover with lists of chains, rods, troy weight, cwt, etc

No, I was born in 74

Unfortunately I deal with USAnians daily, cos oil and gas, hence cu.ft, bbl ...