Friday, October 16, 2009

Unplugged: Wheel

For this Unplugged challenge, I came up with a new unit of measure, the tire! I realized how stupid measurements are because someone could just come up with a new one and use it instead of the ones most people use. I think it would be funny if someone went into a store and asked for two tires of fabric, can you imagine the looks they would get? The funniest part would be the fact that you were using a perfectly legal measuring system! Unorthodox perhaps, but not illegal. Anyway, I decided to figure out the distance to the moon in wheels, and then the distance around it as well. I measured the height of our minivans wheel and found it to be 26in tall. I then looked up the mean distance to the moon, and changed that number to inches. After that I divided in the length of the tire and found it would take 282,076,135.02 tires to get to the moon. However, I didn't stop there, I then took the distance around the moon (the circumference) and turned that into inches as well. Then I again divided in the size of the tire, and found that to go around the moon it would take 16,528,187.08 tires!

1 comment:

Barb said...

Two tires of fabric please....hahaha.

It is interesting to think about how someone had to come up with measurement standards to begin with. Why does a foot have 12 inches? Why is a mile 5280 feet? There does not seem to be in rhyme or reason to it.

I enjoyed your post.

Love,
Mom