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Comment by ziofill | Hacker News Reader

> Thats’s comparable to a single strand of spaghetti holding up about 3,300 one-pound bags of sugar

What an odd example. A mid-sized car would have been much clearer.

I also thought that was weird. Then I learned it gets better. If you click through to the BBC article that was apparently their main source, the quote is this:

> Alternatively, as Prof Barber explained, it can be compared to a single string of spaghetti holding up 3,000 half-kilogram bags of sugar.

So the professor used an item that was familiar to his English audience (1500 kg=3307 lbs), then the Smithsonian writer tried to be helpful in converting the units, but switched to an item far less familiar to an American. I don't think I've ever bought a 1lb bag of sugar here, while a 500g bag is a little small but normal in the UK.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31500883

https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/sainsburys-white...

But everyone knows, by experience, what 3300 individual roughly one pound bags of sugar weighs and what sort of force is needed to hold it up. Mid sized car is ambiguous, and nobody saw anybody hold that up (seeing hulk doesn't count)

Do they? I don't recall ever seeing a bag of sugar in my life. I'm not a baker though so maybe that explains it.

A car is more easier to picture for me.

You must be from the US.

I am from the US and buy bags of sugar.

What else does sugar come in? If not bags? I don't think I've ever bought sugar in something other than a bag.

Buckets and pallets if you want more

I'm from Europe, I never buy sugar, why would I? I don't want more sugar in my diet.

Not Mary Berry, then. Or anyone else who ever baked a cake. Or cooked, really.

I hate sugar in food, but some recipes use sugar to balance acidity (e.g. tomato ketchup).

It looks like a bag of flour. So you know what it looks like, don’t play dumb.

I'm a guy who never cooks, I have no incentive to play dumb. I don't buy flour or sugar or other random raw ingredients in bulk. The closest I get is maybe a jar of coffee.

There you go, it looks like a jar with roughly 380 grams of coffee. Since you mention a jar, I assume you mean instant coffee. Your jar will be a bit taller than the packet of sugar with a similar surface area. A pound is a pound. It doesn’t matter if it’s 3300 pounds of feathers, or coffee, or sugar.

> Do they? I don't recall ever seeing a bag of sugar in my life. I'm not a baker though so maybe that explains it.

Do you not go to supermarkets or grocery stores?

You think people are better at estimating what 3300 bags of sugar look like - as opposed to estimating the size of a car?

How often has anyone ever seen 3300 bags of sugar together in their lives, do you think?

But what is it in football fields?

That's the usual measurement of size in the States and it's absolutely unbelievably ridiculous.

109m is a perfectly sensible measurement

While I am totally with you on the bags of sugar, I am also unsure of the significance of a single thread of spaghetti!

Is that by weight? By volume? Are we comparing uncooked (brittle) or cooked (flexible)?

Even so, spaghetti strand is not known for strength or tension resistance even when considering the weight/size/volume.

I can't at all understand what this comparison is meant to visualize for me, so it is obviously failing.

> Is that by weight? By volume?

It's holding up 3300 pounds. Pounds is a unit of weight.

> Even so, spaghetti strand is not known for strength or tension resistance even when considering the weight/size/volume.

That's...kinda the point? We have something we don't give two thoughts about (slug tooth) comparable in scale to something not known for strength or tension resistance (spaghetti) holding up to something ginormous as if it's magic. Clearly, we should study slug teeth more!

Imagine if a strand of spaghetti can hold 3300 pounds. It's not possible with spaghetti but with slug teeth, it is! Now imagine the possibilities!

> imagine the possibilities!

Space elevator?

Does a 35,786 km "strand of [slug-tooth] spaghetti" hold its own weight?

But why a spaghetti? Why not your watch band? Or a shopping bag? Or your wedding ring? Or a spoon? Or kevlar strand?

I am talking about characteristics of a spaghetti strand all along, and wondering why was it chosen — does it compare in some way to a snail's tooth, like volume, weight or size?

It sounds like it is very arbitrary. Why would I even imagine it holding 1500kg in relation to a tooth.

You’re meant to visualize a strand as thin as spaghetti holding up an entire car. It’s an impressive visual. The properties of spaghetti (aside from its thickness) has nothing to do with anything here.

Ok, so you are saying that a strand the size of the spaghetti made of snail's tooth would be able to hold a car without breaking — got it, so we are using the volume of a spaghetti but made of this strong material instead.

This makes sense but it was totally not clear from the quote (in the article and posted here).

> 3,300 one-pound bags of sugar

Woah that must weigh almost 3,301 pounds!

No, it’s 3,300 £1 bags of sugar, with undefined weight

Who's your sugar guy? I can get you a deal...

Mid-sized European or American car?

The properly calibrated unit is a Volkswagen Beetle.

The kind the man who drives the snowplow drives?

And how old is it? A B-segment vehicle has gone from 1000kg (or less) to 1300kg (or a lot more for EVs) over the last 20 years.

It's not a question of where the car is from! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A one gram strand of noodle could not carry a 1 tonne car.

That depends. Is the spaghetti made of pure Italian semolina or some bastardized all-purpose flour-based dough? Also, the cut thickness matters as well as how much you salted the water to boil it AND for how long you boiled it. How far is it in the raw-al dente scale?

Both are in the same order of magnitude.

I can't wait until our LLM agents spot these and substitute in our own favorite, personally intuitive format conversions appropriate for the scale.

I'd like this to be expressed in units of pallet(s) of standard cinder blocks.

I'm guessing this was initially '1.5 metric tons', and through a number of helpful and friendly conversions, ended up at 3,300 sugar bags.

Or a lift full of people.

American people or Asian people?

If the lift is geometrically full of the (perhaps blended) mass of people, and race-dependent density is roughly similar, does it matter?

Must be a british thing?

well that's just £3300 then, yeah?

Half that, 3300 pounds of sugar is roughly 1800 quid (retail) and wholesale is probably half of that.

Well that's what ... 300 or so pints?

Wait beer in the UK is 11 quid per pint??? I know UK pints are bigger, but that seems really pricey

I estimated about 6 quid. We left £3300 behind because 3300 1-lb bags of sugar only costs £1800.

;) I like these easy breezy Late Friday threads!

Non, du verstehst es falsch, mon amigo. According to EU standards (of which the Brits are no longer a part of) sugar bags (empty) should weigh exactly a pound each to withstand all and any shipping conditions.

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