Everyone who’s dealt with kids knows you have to bisect the giraffe equally from nose to tail so everyone gets 2 legs, or somebody will cry that it’s unfair.
Even if you think height divided by two, why even describe it that way? Giraffes are tall, but not so unfathomably tall that something half its size is incomprehensible. That’s 7-9ish feet. You couldn’t say the size of Andre the Giant?
Just today, I learned a handy way of visualizing the size of a giraffe. If you took that asteroid that struck off the coast of Iceland, and made a copy of it and put the two of them together, that's about the size of a giraffe.
In his show Taskmaster he is well known for both writing tasks and making jokes through intentionally obtuse language and uncommon phrasing. Frequently the "obvious" interpretation of a task turns out to be non-obvious, or the answer to a riddle is this kind of nondeterministic situation that trips up the contestants and makes for better funny.
Which is to say, the author of the headline is a troll, and did it internationally to bait this very kind of conversation. You won't know which way they sliced the giraffe unless you read the entire thing! Of course, after you do, you still won't know.
The above explanation is correct, but specifically, he uses weird measurements. Like if a task involves counting a distance, he won't use something reasonable like meters, but how many rubber ducks long.
But they're the sort of British that yearns for the good old days, when we still had shillings and inches and diphtheria and jumpers for goalposts and no womens' rights and all that great British stuff.
Its time to retire the metric system in favor of something base 12. Base 10 is for children who need to count on their fingers, base 12 is easier to divide into quarters or thirds. Babylon was right.
Daily Mail are the sort who think adopting the metric system let all the foreigners into Britain and led to the downfall of empire. Probably in that order.
One standard volume giraffe of course, i.e. the volume in m³ an average giraffe would fill (at room temperature and sea level), when passed through a blender.
And then half of that
The scientists had to go through many more proportionate animals before discovering that half a giraffe was a near perfect match for the size of the asteroid.
As it turns out, the emergence and popularization of Zoos during the Victorian era was largely driven by the work conducted at the Royal Institute for Volumetric Measurements in London.
Similarly the expansion of the British empire was mostly driven by the need to find ever larger exotic animals in order to establish comparative volumetric weights for the ever larger ships and constructions of that era.
"25.678 standard volume foxes", was starting to become a bit unwieldy when describing a cargo vessel's size.
Nah, there's a list somewhere of typical weights, dimensions, volumes, etc. of common items. They just put in their value and it pops up. They're nerds first, and scientists second. You KNOW this exists somewhere, and they all have it bookmarked.
The average horse is about half the height and weight of the average giraffe. Giraffes are just a really bad unit of measurement, males weight about 400kg more than females and there is a wide height difference over their global population, they are technically four different species we just all call giraffe 🦒
Also, most people dont even have a good grasp on how big giraffes are anyways!
I once went to a zoo that had an elevated platform extending into the giraffe's habitat so that you could stand face to face with them. Their heads are as big as a normal human, like 5 feet from crown to chin!
And is it half the volume, mass or a dimension? Because I've never tried neither blending or carrying a giraffe before (I never got invited to those parties in uni) so I have no grasp on volume or mass.
It kind of does if you half the volume. If you end up with the hypothetical gas filled half of a giraffe then it's less mass than if you end up with the meat filled half.
Unless you were only trying to convey volume to begin with then yes it doesn't make a difference.
Which part of the giraffe is filled with gas though?.
Are we talking about a cube that is drawn around the giraffe for it's volume or are we talking about the volume of the giraffe if you submerge it in wter and measure the displaced volume?
The Daily Mail readership will not fathom your question. It is a rag for those who would follow MAGA but want to appear intelligent without have either the natural talent or putting in any work to increase knowledge. Baseline racism is a requirement
I don't get why Americans are doing their best to avoid the metric system. It's always weird discriptions. Like dishwashers, or in this case, half a giraffe. Just use bananas if (cubic) meters are too complex.
Yeah sorry, based on assumption. Because the US (plus a few tiny islands) refuses to switch to metric even though imperial is obsolete and complicated. It's also usual practice in the US to use weird things for measurements. Cars, dishwashers, etc.
So in this case it was a wrong assumption on my part.
It's more of a journalist thing. They take the words out of your mouth to reach their own conclusion fast and deliver an answer that'll fit inside the allocated screen time.
"When you heard that people use things instead of measurements to explain the size of other things, exactly how shocking was it to you?"
They describe these random things to avoid people talking about giraffes for hours.
It's not like we don't have imperial units to use. It's just easier to visualize an object you're familiar with than 20ft/6m or whatever other unit. Giraffes is a strange choice though.
Friends of mine are expecting a child. They have an app to compare the current size of the baby. It has the weirdest choices:
Wedding cake (they are always the same size? Depends on the budget right? So if you're rich your child is bigger than when you're poor, when it's the wedding cake size?)
flat box of chocolates (always the same size? Flat child?)
small popcorn bucket
small pinguin (there are so many differently sized small pinguïns)
cotton candy (last one I had was huge, I feel sorry for the woman with a child that size in their womb)
maki
jackfruit
rhubarb (so it's a stick shaped child?)
kitten (a grows the most as a kitten. They are kitten for the first year. It's like saying the size of your baby is the size of a baby.)
I have no clue what these sizes are exactly. I do know what 10cm or 20cm is.
One of the first things they will teach you in engineering design is to start by simplifying the model. So if you're trying to figure out something like the surface area is a fish you assume it's a cylinder then the math is easy. Same thing with assuming the object is in a vacuum. If you do that you ignore wind resistance and it makes the math easier. You can come back later and take the wind resistance into account.
Everyone who’s dealt with kids knows you have to bisect the giraffe equally from nose to tail so everyone gets 2 legs, or somebody will cry that it’s unfair.
Everyone who deals with scientists knows they assume a perfectly spherical, frictionless, giraffe.
In a vacuum
lol a giraffe would never fit in my vacuum.
You have to remember to take the Elephant out first.
That was a snake.
Git gud
If it's frictionless, then a proper scientist already knows it's in a perfect vacuum.
Not necessarily. Two objects can still have friction in a vacuum together.
There was only half a giraffe. It didn't say half a giraffe and some molecules.
I cant remember, what is the friction coefficient for a giraffe?
I let one cut and the other gets to pick first.
This is the way. And from experience, it will result in sub-nanometer size differences.
Kids are total commies.
Make sure to get the same number of spots too.
I think you mean Solomon.
I think Samson made my luggage.
He didn’t personally build it.
This is great! I feel I'm reading a drunk Brit who has some familiarity with the Bible, just a little.
Oi! They're both cunts!
Fewer
Even if you think height divided by two, why even describe it that way? Giraffes are tall, but not so unfathomably tall that something half its size is incomprehensible. That’s 7-9ish feet. You couldn’t say the size of Andre the Giant?
The Youth Today don't know who that is. Then again, do they know how large a giraffe is? We may never know.
Just today, I learned a handy way of visualizing the size of a giraffe. If you took that asteroid that struck off the coast of Iceland, and made a copy of it and put the two of them together, that's about the size of a giraffe.
If that doesn't get you some Nobel prize, I don't know what will.
Sorry, I need that in dishwashers or ping pong balls
I think you just need to translate everything to bananas then go in from there
Alex Horn wrote it.
Sorry, I don’t get the reference and the Wikipedia page didn’t help!
In his show Taskmaster he is well known for both writing tasks and making jokes through intentionally obtuse language and uncommon phrasing. Frequently the "obvious" interpretation of a task turns out to be non-obvious, or the answer to a riddle is this kind of nondeterministic situation that trips up the contestants and makes for better funny.
Which is to say, the author of the headline is a troll, and did it internationally to bait this very kind of conversation. You won't know which way they sliced the giraffe unless you read the entire thing! Of course, after you do, you still won't know.
Ah, no wonder the Wikipedia page didn’t help… the top result when I searched was for a cult leader named Alex Horn. Thanks for the explanation!
They meant Alex Horne
The above explanation is correct, but specifically, he uses weird measurements. Like if a task involves counting a distance, he won't use something reasonable like meters, but how many rubber ducks long.
People usually measure asteroids by mass (but then, those people are already abnormal, so who knows?), if so, it's something around the size of a cow.
Or maybe they could use metric...
A big rock, maybe this is the appropriate time to use stone
How many stones does a big rock weight?
Very big stone = big rock Big stone = rock Stone = small rock
Everyone that says metric is easy haven't figured this out.
This is why real scientists use the only reasonable real world measurement - a perfectly spherical cow in a vacuum.
Hmm. Thought they used bananas.
Maybe in a shop vac.
obviously the scientists meant a spherical giraffe in a vacuum
Personally I thought it was obvious that they were talking about the outer half
americans be using anything but the metric system
Daily Mail is British
But they're the sort of British that yearns for the good old days, when we still had shillings and inches and diphtheria and jumpers for goalposts and no womens' rights and all that great British stuff.
British people old enough to have supported the original nazis be using anything but the metric system
I was thinking this must be metric because only Europeans with their noses firmly in the air would get it.
Its time to retire the metric system in favor of something base 12. Base 10 is for children who need to count on their fingers, base 12 is easier to divide into quarters or thirds. Babylon was right.
Americans be using metric all our lives.
Yeah, we measure our soda in liters all the time, but only the 2 litre bottles. Other sizes are in ounces, and milk is in gallons and sometimes pints.
Let's not go there. T'is a silly place.
Dear gods
How far will these Americans go to not use the metric system... ffs
Sadly they’re not American. Containment has been breached.
Daily Mail are the sort who think adopting the metric system let all the foreigners into Britain and led to the downfall of empire. Probably in that order.
Your bigotry has blinded you so much you couldn’t even see the two biggest, boldest words in the picture.
Oh no; I saw it was the DM... I just assumed that the writer must have been American.
You are SO correct, as I should have realized by the giraffe unit of measure.
I'm at a loss as to the Venn diagram where giraffe and imperial would overlap....
One standard volume giraffe of course, i.e. the volume in m³ an average giraffe would fill (at room temperature and sea level), when passed through a blender. And then half of that
The scientists had to go through many more proportionate animals before discovering that half a giraffe was a near perfect match for the size of the asteroid.
As it turns out, the emergence and popularization of Zoos during the Victorian era was largely driven by the work conducted at the Royal Institute for Volumetric Measurements in London.
Similarly the expansion of the British empire was mostly driven by the need to find ever larger exotic animals in order to establish comparative volumetric weights for the ever larger ships and constructions of that era.
"25.678 standard volume foxes", was starting to become a bit unwieldy when describing a cargo vessel's size.
Nah, there's a list somewhere of typical weights, dimensions, volumes, etc. of common items. They just put in their value and it pops up. They're nerds first, and scientists second. You KNOW this exists somewhere, and they all have it bookmarked.
So like the size of a horse?
The average horse is about half the height and weight of the average giraffe. Giraffes are just a really bad unit of measurement, males weight about 400kg more than females and there is a wide height difference over their global population, they are technically four different species we just all call giraffe 🦒
I was just going to say, what kind of weird ass size comparison is that. It’s almost as egregious as saying “half the size of two apples”.
The Smurfs were 3 apples tall.
Also, most people dont even have a good grasp on how big giraffes are anyways!
I once went to a zoo that had an elevated platform extending into the giraffe's habitat so that you could stand face to face with them. Their heads are as big as a normal human, like 5 feet from crown to chin!
This is what Big Giraffe doesn't want you to know
Ah yes the Newfoundland garden giraffe, often times overlooked due to the Canadian House Hippo.
I wish there was Hippos at the white house.
Reads Daily Mail clickbait, proceeds to blame "scientists"
And is it half the volume, mass or a dimension? Because I've never tried neither blending or carrying a giraffe before (I never got invited to those parties in uni) so I have no grasp on volume or mass.
Surely a giraffe is nearly uniform density making the distinction between volume and mass irrelevant
Assume a spherical giraffe.
Even if it is not if you are just looking at the toal volume or mass it makes no difference when you halve it.
It kind of does if you half the volume. If you end up with the hypothetical gas filled half of a giraffe then it's less mass than if you end up with the meat filled half.
Unless you were only trying to convey volume to begin with then yes it doesn't make a difference.
An astroid the mass of the meat half of a giraffe and the volume of 5kg of somewhat dry duck feathers...
I'm beginning to think that it would more relatable if it was just stated in kg or m^3 instead
Which part of the giraffe is filled with gas though?.
Are we talking about a cube that is drawn around the giraffe for it's volume or are we talking about the volume of the giraffe if you submerge it in wter and measure the displaced volume?
No part, thats why I said hypothetical. But it's the only way to make sense of the claim that volume Vs mass is an issue.
Hopefully we're not imagining halving the bounding box around the giraffe including the air
Just the left half
Ask questions when you do not. :)
Start with where you are, others will be there too. :)
The Daily Mail readership will not fathom your question. It is a rag for those who would follow MAGA but want to appear intelligent without have either the natural talent or putting in any work to increase knowledge. Baseline racism is a requirement
In other words, a large boulder the size of a small boulder
I’m surprised they didn’t use immigrants as the unit.
The anatomical answer is sagitally down the midline.
I don't get why Americans are doing their best to avoid the metric system. It's always weird discriptions. Like dishwashers, or in this case, half a giraffe. Just use bananas if (cubic) meters are too complex.
Isn't daily mail in the UK?
You mean wannabe US? (never truly accepted metric system, even discussed to change back to imperial)
Edit: fair point though. My bad.
As a USian, even we are baffled by measuring things in hands and stone.
Exactly. The only real unit is football fields.
People enjoy when things are compared in this way, it’s really not that shocking.
Other people (me) hate it.
Neat, thanks for letting us all know!
Why do people online caste Americans as the culprit when this is clearly from a British source?
Yeah sorry, based on assumption. Because the US (plus a few tiny islands) refuses to switch to metric even though imperial is obsolete and complicated. It's also usual practice in the US to use weird things for measurements. Cars, dishwashers, etc.
So in this case it was a wrong assumption on my part.
I'm deeply sorry.
It's more of a journalist thing. They take the words out of your mouth to reach their own conclusion fast and deliver an answer that'll fit inside the allocated screen time.
"When you heard that people use things instead of measurements to explain the size of other things, exactly how shocking was it to you?"
They describe these random things to avoid people talking about giraffes for hours.
It's not like we don't have imperial units to use. It's just easier to visualize an object you're familiar with than 20ft/6m or whatever other unit. Giraffes is a strange choice though.
Friends of mine are expecting a child. They have an app to compare the current size of the baby. It has the weirdest choices:
I have no clue what these sizes are exactly. I do know what 10cm or 20cm is.
It's not the scientists, it's a single journalist who is popping out these headlines. Some of those caught attention.
I once saw a snake half the size of a garden hose.
You divide the giraffe vertically down the center 🤦♂️
Coronal or Sagittal?
How much is it in bananas?
Bilaterally as is the way.
Probably along the primary axis
The thing that's bothering me is that they ended a question with a period. Why, random person on the Internet, why?
Indeed, why would they do that.
I don’t know?
Puzzling.
Easy. Just imagine only the spots part.
Should've used bananas for scale.
Laterally.
What's with the spherical comments in a vacuum?
One of the first things they will teach you in engineering design is to start by simplifying the model. So if you're trying to figure out something like the surface area is a fish you assume it's a cylinder then the math is easy. Same thing with assuming the object is in a vacuum. If you do that you ignore wind resistance and it makes the math easier. You can come back later and take the wind resistance into account.
Halved with a vertical cut.
Bifurcated down between the eyes
Solomon’s giraffe…
Catie can STFU because she doesn't know what a question mark looks like.