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245: Coochie Coochie CooComic
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Fifteen orders of magnitude sounds a lot less than what it actually is.

Consider the Empire State Building. 1,450 feet high, mass 340,000 tons. The building is two hundred and fifty times taller than you or I, and masses just over four *million* times a normal adult. (Okay, so two million times an average American.) Think about that for a second.

Let's run a little thought experiment. Let's say you want to destroy the building, out of some repressed King Kong complex or something. Imagine an endless green field (those are relaxing) containing the Building and you, nothing else. Your job is to destroy it. Ready? Go!

Having fun? No? Well, your fists are pitifully useless against it; you can't punch it to death. Maybe if you use your brain... let's give you a spanner (i.e. a wrench). No? You can't even start thinking about taking it apart because it's so flipping big. Think about the heating system alone. Seventy miles of pipe; let's assume that they join, on average, once every few feet or so, with bolts. That's over a million bolts. Let's say you can unscrew one every ten seconds or so. That's maybe three or four days of work, unscrewing one bolt at a time. And what's the end result? The top floors are chilly.

Let's cheat a bit and give you a jackhammer. Sure, the outside is made of limestone, but the interior is a little substance called steel. Jackhammers, not so hot against it.

Okay then. Let's really cheat and give you a thousand gallons of liquid explosive. We can safely say that that will do more damage than you could possibly hope to in a manner of years, right? Sure. You set off the explosive...

Hey, guess what? Been there. Done that. On a July Saturday in 1945, a B-25 bomber hit the building; said bomber has a standard fuel capacity of about a thousand gallons of a highly combustible mixture of fuel designed to provide maximum power is a dense package. Of the ~20,000 people that work in the building, exactly 14 died. The ensuing fire was put out in 40 minutes. And it was open for business the next Monday, two days later.

At this point, it is safe to say that one person, alone, is extremely unlikely to cause any major damage to the Empire State building without recourse to significant help. The kicker? This indestructible (to you) Empire State Building is only three orders of magnitude bigger than you, and only six orders heavier.

About the most you could hope to do to something fifteen orders of magnitude bigger than you is tickle it.

 
 
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