On that note... Luda just killed it

Cheers Murray

Earlier today, Mr Murray Hernon sent us a request all the way from down under. Patrick of the Bestimate team decided to take this on, For anyone who doesn't know the request, this is it;

"If i was aiming to dig a hole straight down from here in melbourne to the inn on the green in harpenden using only my coffee mug, how many times would i end up emptying my mug of dirt - and would i make it by last orders?"

For anyone like me, who didn't exactly excel at maffematics, rest assured this involves some pretty advanced shit. I mean, we're talking pythagoras theorum, algebra, trigonometry and euclidean geometry. Advanced shit.
The illustration above is Pat's notebook paper with sketches etc. We're going to abbreviate the method here, but these maths are sound, Pat got a first in Maths while I was coolin in the spot listening to bare Ludacris.
Here it goes;


Assumptions first,
The soil was easy to scoop throughout the journey and there was no molten core down there,
Murray lived forever and could exert effort infinitely without fatigue,
Murray's scoops removed exactly 1 pint of soil and the scoop was indestructible.


Any of the well known distance calculators available on Google will tell you that the distance from Harpenden to Melbourne is 16910 Km. And we all know the radius of the earth is 6378.1 Km. It obviously follows using a little geometry, trigonometry and our favourite rule since offside - the sine rule - that the straight line through the interior of the earth between the two cities is 12,374.75 Km. Assuming Murray is still skinny he'll need a hole 1m wide. He'll shift 38million cubic metres which will take 16,900,000,000 scoops with a pint glass (we all know that's all you got down there). Which, by miraculous coincidence is the number of pints the average Aussie can drink more than a Pomme, according to said Aussie. PM

So, if one scoop took one second to scoop, he would arrive in the year 2544 on the 28th December BEFORE LAST ORDERS! So that means he could put that indestructible cup to good use finally by getting a pint of finest space lager.

Ask a wild question, get a Bestimate. Bean and Pat. X

Inevitable Mr Anderson

This morning's blog is a response to an inevitable request for a sexual related Bestimate.

Mark Gunther asks;
"If a wank was a standard unit of measurement, where 1 wank was the distance covered by the hand when going from base to tip of the average size penis, how many wanks away is the Sun?"

A wild question indeed, here's what we did.

Assumptions,
The size of Mark's penis is 6 inches. (Eww)
It's winter, darker depressing times means Mark has to pleasure himself more often. (It affects the distance of the Sun from the Earth as the orbit is elliptical.)

The "length of stroke" is 6"=15cm=0.00015Km
Distance from Earth to Sun=146,000,000Km

Therefore 146,000,000/0.00015= 973,000,000,000Wanks

So Mark, if you think that might be a bit too much like hard work (excuse the pun), if you get all 3 billion men in the world to help you in a wank-powered rocket, that's about 324 wanks. Happy stroking.

Ask a wild question, get a Bestimate. Bean. X

On another note..

How weird is this?




Bestimate: Incredibly weird.

Tad rusty

Since Mr Patrick McCarthy submitted our first Bestimate request on Saturday, a lot has happened. Suffice to say there's been plenty of interest, along with a fair amount of pessimism.
Jessica Martin, I won't forget what you said and neither will the angry hordes reading this.

But back to business. Great news everybody, WE HAVE OUR FIRST BESTIMATE. If you need reminding of the question, it's on the previous blog. Heres how we did it..

Assumptions.

First, we made the assumption that the smoker in question (let's call him Vincent) smokes 20 ciggies a day.
Second, the cigarettes are Marlboro Gold king size (normal size to you and I).
Third, that 62mm of the 85mm cigarette is smoked. (Butt and letters discarded).

62mm multiplied by; 20 a day, then 365.25 a year, then 20 for 20 years.

=9.058 Kilometers

Imperially, that means that the monster cigarette would be 5.6285 miles long! Converted to feet, Vinnie's ciggie would be taller than Mount Everest at 29718.48 feet above sea level (Everest stands at 29029 feet.)

Considering that Marlboro Gold (lights) contain 6mg of Tar each, that equates to approximately 876.6g of tar inhaled over the 20 years. Staggeringly, that's more than the weight of an average adult camel's brain.

To take the Bestimate even further, assuming each cigarette takes 5 mins to blaze, it would take Vin 507 days of continuous smoking to finish. Obviously drawing the conclusion that climbing Everest is much quicker than smoking a cigarette as tall as it.

So there you have it, our first Bestimate. The first of many. Thanks Vincent, thanks Mr Patrick McCarthy and thanks Bestimateys.

Ask a wild question, get a Bestimate. Bean. X

Breaking the seal

In my first ever blog entry, I'll introduce the concept. You ask us a wild question, we'll try and answer it. Every Saturday we'll choose the best question submitted, work on it throughout the week and post our Bestimate 7 days later.
We'll post our methods, research, calculations and try and answer any queries.

We're going to start with a question asked last night in the Pipeline bar. Mr Patrick McCarthy asks;
"If you join together all of the cigarettes smoked by a smoker of 20 years, how long would that cigarette be?"

A wild question indeed, Bestimate next Saturday. X