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3058: Tall Structures
| Tall Structures |
 Title text: Briefly set a new record for tallest human-made structure by getting my knit sweater snagged on the skydiving plane door as I jumped and not noticing until I'd landed. |
Explanation
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This explanation is incomplete: Created by a BOT ON TOP OF A SPACE ELEVATOR - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
This is a comparison of various tall buildings and structures, ranging from the pyramid of Giza to the Burj Khalifa. The buildings are sorted by height. The tallest structure, as Randall claims, is an aerostat balloon, which significantly exceeds the height of the Burj Khalifa.
| Name | Height | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| The Great Pyramid (Giza) | 137 m (449.5 ft) | A very famous pyramid built c. 2600 BC |
| The Shard (London) | 309.6 m (1,016 ft) | A pyramid shaped skyscraper |
| The Eiffel Tower (Paris) | 330 m (1,083 ft) | A wrought-iron lattice tower named after its designer, Gustave Eiffel |
| The Empire State Building (New York) | 443.2 m (1,454 ft) | An art-deco office tower often seen in media |
| The CN Tower (Toronto) | 553.3 m (1,815 ft) | A communication and observation tower in Canada |
| The Clock Towers (Mecca) | 601 m (1,972 ft) | A hotel complex featuring the largest clock in the world |
| KRDK TV Mast (North Dakota) | 630 m (2,060 ft) | Tallest structure in the United States |
| Shanghai Tower | 632 m (2,073 ft) | Tallest skyscraper in China |
| Tokyo Skytree | 634.0 m (2,080 ft) | Tallest tower in the world |
| Merdeka 118 (Kuala Lumpur) | 678.9 m (2,227 ft) | Name meaning "independence" in Malay |
| Burj Khalifa (Dubai) | 828 m (2,717 ft) | Tallest structure in the world |
| Some random aerostat that happens to be operating today | ~1,500m (4,921ft) | A balloon that can be tethered (depicted here) or untethered |
Transcript
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- This is not actually possible, since a knit garment is not made from one long thread of yarn, but many interwoven threads.
This is actually wrong; knitting is a technique for entangling a single yarn with itself in such a way that it forms a fabric. (It's not to be confused with weaving, which does indeed use many, shorter threads.) In practice, a large, complex item like a sweater is made from multiple pieces sewn together, but it would have something like a single digit number of separate yarns.
Incidentally, a sweater contains on the order of a kilometer of yarn, which is also about the minimum safe distance for skydiving, so this scenario passes the Fermi estimate sniff test. 162.158.159.100 00:55, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
- Wouldn't the yarn snap at some point from acceleration due to gravity and the tightness of the weave pattern? TomtheBuilder (talk) 01:56, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
- Usually, the plane you are skydiving from won't remain circling above you ... -- Hkmaly (talk) 03:22, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
- 1000m is the height where you should start considering opening your chute, so you wouldn't do much skydiving if you jumped from that height. Beginners will start aroung 1500m to have a few seconds of free fall before opening, advanced skydivers somewhere between 3000m and 5000m.172.68.151.30 11:59, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
- Reminds me of the old (often retold, often varying, probably more apocryphal than not) about the Gurkhas, the British 'overseas' branch of the army which is rightfully honoured and feared for its bravery and tenacity and basically being a compact bundle of badass.
- At some point (typically in WW2), the idea arises that it would be useful to drop a regiment or two of them behind enemy lines. They are approached with the idea of undergoing training, which they readily volunteer for, and then they get the full briefing.
- British Officer: We'll take you up in the plane and drop you from <given height>, on your first training flight.
- Gurkha Officer: That sounds rather high, can we perhaps try <slightly lower height> for our first attempt?
- British Officer: I wouldn't advise that, you need a bit more height just to make sure your parachutes open properly.
- Gurkha Officer: Oh, we'll have parachutes? Ok then, no problem!
- ... 172.70.160.252 13:52, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
This is kinda random, but does this wiki have a page for xkcd.com/no and xkcd.com/yes?? I didn't see any and I think they at least deserve a page 172.69.23.94 (talk) 04:32, 4 March 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- Huh that's cool, didn't know those pages existed. Do you know anything about why they exist? (also please sign your posts with ~~~~) TheTrainsKid (talk) 05:50, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
- Weird. Here with active links: yes and no. Not sure where to put this, maybe under the explanation of xckd or the structure of the page? Hmmm --Kynde (talk) 09:30, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
- Still no idea why they exist? I was hoping somebody had already sleuthed it out. 162.158.167.65 15:04, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
- I'm about 80% sure it's for What If. 172.71.10.242 13:43, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
- Still no idea why they exist? I was hoping somebody had already sleuthed it out. 162.158.167.65 15:04, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
- Weird. Here with active links: yes and no. Not sure where to put this, maybe under the explanation of xckd or the structure of the page? Hmmm --Kynde (talk) 09:30, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
Nice to see the UK officially represented, there, but it's not even the tallest tower in the UK (and that's not counting the seven or eight latticework masts that range from merely taller than The Shard to even taller than EMTS). I suspect similar absences feature in the rest of the list, which I note yet features other freestanding towers-but-not-buildings (plus the 'joker' neither-tower-nor-building that is the aerostat). 172.70.163.142 07:06, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
Should we delete the mention of a tall structure left out or make a list? Moved it to a trivia section and removed the personal "On the woeful lack of Ostankino TV tower" section heading. But I feel it should be left out and the one making that change should have posted it in this discussion page in stead. --Kynde (talk) 09:30, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
- I'm sure there's a definitive list of "tallest artificial structures (not shown in the comic)", which we can decide the full criteria for (a number of additional broadcasting masts, self-supporting alone or guy-roped, plus maybe various oil-platforms that are sufficiently tall if you measure from the subsurface base). The (now-Triviaed) Ostankino intormation should not really sit there alone, without various other absences noted (see just above your comment, in this Talk/Discussion section).
- If we were to add other examples, though, we could do without a lot of the extra information, just keep it no more complicated than the table with the comic-depicted structures. (One option is, indeed, to open up the comic's table to off-comic examples, those lines being given a light grey cell background to distinguish any which aren't on the comic, and distinguish masts, towers, buildings, rigs(?) and (the lone example of) tethered aerostat.) 172.70.160.253 12:20, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
- Postscript: became confused as to why the table I'd originally seen here no longer was. It got removed, but I don't understand why. Anyway, if it really doesn't belong in the Explanation, put it into the Trivia section instead and then add any desired relevent Otsankino/etc lines in as well...? 141.101.98.178 12:35, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
Comment thread for the inclusion of the table, if you have an opinion, state your opinion first with "KEEP" or "REMOVE" and then explain your position below. TomtheBuilder (talk) 12:38, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
- As the above IP (in double-reply to Kynde), KEEP because we have (or should have) plenty of similar tables-of-things-in-the-comic, and this is exactly in line with that. If there's any serious reason why it is superfluous in the Explanation, it'll go in the Trivia, but I can't currently see why it needs to be moved. But I look forward to the (twice-?!)removing IP, or any other individual, justifying the "we don't need" attitude. (Also, as I can't provably change my vote, even if ever persuaded otherwise, don't try to count this or any other IPs in the tally. This is an indicative statement only.) 141.101.98.248 12:53, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
You could add a Wikipedia link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostankino_Tower. --162.158.175.72 13:45, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
- At the time of this suggestion, there actually was such a link. Though it was removed in a later (justified, IMO) removal of the disproportionately off-comic focus on this particular structure (amongst manner others that exist and were neither in the comic nor given 'explanation space'). But you've mentioned it here, too, so fear not! 172.70.162.196 17:26, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
I'm interested to know what sort of garment would Felix Baumgartner need to wear to qualify for the highest structure award when jumping from 36,402.6 metres. --Alos (talk) 14:10, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
- Long Johns? (Though perhaps more like what Kittinger would wear, than Baumgartner or Alan Eustace...) 172.70.162.196 17:26, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
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