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