Talk:1649: Pipelines

No discussion yet? Strange ...

Anyway, the title text "and we'll all just show up with a bucket each day to take our share of the resulting smoothie" reminds me of this bit near the end of Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx0ME65y72E (Warning: not for the squeamish.) --RenniePet (talk) 16:21, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

This comic came out very late today. Mikemk (talk) 19:16, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

I tried to discuss earlier but did not have permission to "create a page." Now I can comment, I assume because you created the page? Hrmm. Anyway, my comment is that the honey pipe seems so unreasonably large that I'm curious of the source and the math. I found figures for honey production in US, in pounds, did not convert it to volume or look up other values but it's hard to imagine it is correct in relation to ketchup, mustard, and mayo. Grocery stores sell honey in smaller bottles and much less often, than the others. Factory bakers and makers of cereal use a little honey but not much; it's so much more expensive than corn syrup or even sugar. Restaurants use all those other products at much higher volumes. McDonald's has honey at breakfast for biscuits but it's rarely requested, versus how many gallons per day of ketchup they must use per store, just on burgers, let alone packets given away. 108.162.216.62 17:24, 29 February 2016 (UTC)wrybred

Please (once you get permission to do create pages) do not try to create pages like this yourself. There is a bot that will do that when the comic has been out for a short while. And this comic was very late. And when people do it themselves there often goes a lot wrong with the functionality. And contributions may be lost when an admin has to fix this later. --Kynde (talk) 22:00, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

There is so much wrong with "cheese" labeled as a fluid... Flavio from Switzerland 141.101.104.33 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Since there are both glass (not a solid) and meat (mostly solid) and cement, only liquid for a short time, then the question is if cheese (once milk) could not be measured as a liquid without being more strange than other substances in the table? I also think that some (strange to me) people like to eat cheese that is runny ;-p --Kynde (talk) 22:00, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

I find it appropriate and satisfying that tea and sugar are the same size :) 108.162.245.180 18:38, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Glass is a reference to the common misconception that glass is a slow moving liquid. (Spoiler: It's not) 141.101.106.161 19:31, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

I believe he has mentioned this fact in a previous comic... One where he urges us to look at Wikipedias page for common misconceptions before going to a party and telling everyone that glass is a liquid! ;-) --Kynde (talk) 22:00, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

To give an example: Americans drunk just under 900 million gallons of wine in 2014, or just over 4 million cubic metres per year. There are 31557600 seconds in a year, so about America drinks 0.13 m3/s. If the pipe is flowing at 4m/s The pipe must have an area of 0.032m^2 = 320cm^2. The radius of a pipe of area 320cm^2 is 10cm. The wine pipe should have a diameter of 20cm. How about a table of calulated diameters 141.101.70.91 19:38, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Fantastic. I did some recalculations of the numbers posted as a transcript, at the moment moved to a trivia section when I posted a real transcript. There was an error in the scaling which I have now fixed. And right now the number for wine diameter says 20 cm. I did just check the picture and I disagree a little as I come to 11.5 mm on the picture which would then make it 23 cm in diameter, but that would be close enough to fit with this wine calculation withing the uncertainty of both calculations measurement and Randall's accuracy. And yes there should be such a table as you mentions.

Table now added. --Kynde (talk) 22:33, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

But what about the additional wine produced in America? You only took into account the wine consumed. --Effy (talk) 10:15, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Also, I recalculated from the article you linked to and got a figure much closer to 18 cm. Maybe check your calculations? When I take 893M gallons and convert to cubic meters I get about 3.38 million, not just over 4 million. This would perhaps suggest that each pipe in the comic is either matter produced OR consumed, but not both added together. --Effy (talk) 10:33, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

One last comment: I corrected the table per above, I hope that's okay. However, I noticed that if we use wine produced instead of wine consumed, the pipe comes out to 17.9 cm instead of 18.5. Perhaps that was what the pipe was intended for? (I guess the extra wine will need to imported with a transatlantic pipeline.) See: List of wine-producing countries. --Effy (talk) 10:39, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the scale check. It's always nice to know someone else looked at this stuff. BTW - would suggest that you not compare "size" to "calculated size" - but rather multiply these diameters by 4 m/s and output "calculated annual output" v. "Annual Output" - any source that can be found for annual outputs. This would be a bit more elegant as sources can be verified instantaneously. (i.e. using the 23 cm wine for example - "Annual Output" would be 4 million cubic meters, "Calculated Annual Output" would be 5.24 million cubic meters. --188.114.106.47 23:20, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

It's not blonde, it's albino. 173.245.63.144 23:28, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

How are we defining a typical computer screen? How many dots per inch? And where do we get that data from? Are we gonna have to do the math ourselves on one of the pipes to figure out what DPI setting Randal is suggesting? Or has he said somewhere? Trlkly (talk) 23:58, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure the initial size assumptions are very fair. If not-Megan is 5 feet 11, she's in the 99.4% percentile for American women. So perhaps the initial measurement of 9cm should be smaller for an "average computer". Here's a percentile height checker. https://tall.life/height-percentile-calculator-age-country/ Bgaskin (talk) 23:50, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

The Trivia section speaks of Leap Day comics, describing another as being "also like this one on a Friday in 2008". That implies Leap Day yesterday was a Friday. It was not, Leap Day was a Monday this year (as was the release date of this comic). ???? Other phrasing in the Trivia section uses similarly incorrect phrasing, leading me to question the validity of the declaration that the next Leap Day Release Date is in 20 years. (I personally can't check right now). - NiceGuy1 108.162.218.148 06:44, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

I note that the Trivia sections of 390: Nightmares and 1023: Late-Night PBS are similarly garbled with the same incorrect information. I also note that UTC timestamps on here is 5:15 ahead of Eastern time where I am. I thought UTC was the middle of the ocean, this is 15 minutes past Greenwich. - NiceGuy1 108.162.218.148 07:51, 2 March 2016 (UTC)