Binary, the base 2 number system, is how numbers are described and maths are carried out by computers. Gottfried Leibniz first described binary in 1703 but the people of the island of Mangareva in French Polynesia may have used binary long before that. Researchers believe they have discovered that the people used a mixture of base 10 and 2.
Different number bases in use by other cultures is nothing new, the Babylonians used base 60 and some Australian Aborigines use base 5 for example (personally i've always loved octal base 8). The people of Mangareva originally used base 10 like other Polynesians (and most other humans) but added binary to their counting.
The circle has turned full circle and the people of Mangareva now use base 10 only as a result of Western influences. Researchers have traced the use of binary through analysis of the language. Unfortunately no one on Mangareva still uses the binary system (except in their computers of course).
Interesting Mangareva is the way travellers can get to Pitcairn Island, the most remote of all British colonies. After flying to Mangareva from Tahiti Pitcairn Island is then reachable by boat, its a 32 hour journey though!
Showing posts with label maths. Show all posts
Showing posts with label maths. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
A lifetime of toilet roll
In the bathroom i began wondering, as you do, how many toilet rolls the average person uses in a life time. As i am a geek/weird i decided to work it out. By observation i have found that on average i use 1/3 of a roll a day. Over the course of a year this works out to 120.45 toilet rolls. According to official statistics the current life expectancy of a Briton is 80.1 years thus that works out at 9648.05 rolls in a lifetime.
Now obviously this contains a few assumptions. I've been using myself as a model but i am an average sort of bloke so its seems reasonable. Of course over a lifetime there are times you will use more and less toilet roll but we are talking averages here.
For a bit more fun i decided to see how far these toilet rolls would stretch if placed end to end. Measuring one of the rolls in my house i found the length of the tube to be 11cm. Thus 9648.05 rolls placed end to end would stretch for 1061.28m. This is a bit of a disappointment, just over a kilometre, i was hoping it would reach the Moon or something like that.
As a challenge my friend asked me how many double decker buses these toilet rolls would fill. An interesting challenge indeed, on the internet i found an advert for an exhibition double decker bus with an advertised floor space of 41m square. I thus calculated the available volume of a bus to be 82 cubic metres. This contains a few assumptions of course. For ease of calculation i used 2m for the height of the space on the 2 decks. This is more than it actually is but of course the floor space doesn't include the space for the driver and the stair well so you can add these. I think 82m cubed is a reasonable figure.
Now how much space does a toilet roll take up. Well of course a toilet roll is a cylinder but for our purposes we can assume it is a cube as when the rolls are placed side by side you can't fit anything in the space between. My model roll is, as i have already calculated 11cm long, and indeed it is 11cm wide too. Thus our roll is a cube with 11cm sides. Thus our roll has a volume of 1331 cubic centimetres which works out to 0.001331 cubic metres. A bus can therefore contain 61607.81 toilet rolls which means a single person's entire lifetime of toilet rolls can be easily stored on one double decker bus. In fact 6.38 people could store their toilet rolls on a bus. So thats good to know.
Now obviously this contains a few assumptions. I've been using myself as a model but i am an average sort of bloke so its seems reasonable. Of course over a lifetime there are times you will use more and less toilet roll but we are talking averages here.
For a bit more fun i decided to see how far these toilet rolls would stretch if placed end to end. Measuring one of the rolls in my house i found the length of the tube to be 11cm. Thus 9648.05 rolls placed end to end would stretch for 1061.28m. This is a bit of a disappointment, just over a kilometre, i was hoping it would reach the Moon or something like that.
As a challenge my friend asked me how many double decker buses these toilet rolls would fill. An interesting challenge indeed, on the internet i found an advert for an exhibition double decker bus with an advertised floor space of 41m square. I thus calculated the available volume of a bus to be 82 cubic metres. This contains a few assumptions of course. For ease of calculation i used 2m for the height of the space on the 2 decks. This is more than it actually is but of course the floor space doesn't include the space for the driver and the stair well so you can add these. I think 82m cubed is a reasonable figure.
Now how much space does a toilet roll take up. Well of course a toilet roll is a cylinder but for our purposes we can assume it is a cube as when the rolls are placed side by side you can't fit anything in the space between. My model roll is, as i have already calculated 11cm long, and indeed it is 11cm wide too. Thus our roll is a cube with 11cm sides. Thus our roll has a volume of 1331 cubic centimetres which works out to 0.001331 cubic metres. A bus can therefore contain 61607.81 toilet rolls which means a single person's entire lifetime of toilet rolls can be easily stored on one double decker bus. In fact 6.38 people could store their toilet rolls on a bus. So thats good to know.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)