Icebergs measured in Manhattans: Official
It's a well-known fact that volumes of water are described in terms of Olympic-sized swimming pools, while running H2O is quantified in elephants per second, but have you ever wondered just what is the official standard for large bodies of ice? Well wonder no more, because ScienceDaily has the answer. According to this report on …
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One question...
how many gin an tonics worth of ice is that?
Depends....
....on the size of the Gins & Tonics in question.
GJC
Re: One question...
No idea, but I reckon that you're looking at an entire India of lemons[1] to put in it.
[1] Something over two million tonnes apparently.
Re: Re: 1 question
Lemons? Lemons?? If one adds fruit, it is a slice of lime.
I prefer...
Gin and Titonic so that the scaling can work better.
http://www.worldwidefred.com/ginandtitonic.htm
ahem...
Gin and Tonic has lime.
Vodka and tonic hs lemon.
Don´t forget the angostura bitters...
I beg to differ.
Ice sheets were always measured in Belgiums (or is that Belgia?) in my day. Bleeding yanks, trying to muscle in with their archaic measurements.
Damn big cocktail
Personally I like a little less vermouth and a little more bitters.
Whales
I think they should be measured in Whales (as opposed to Wales). Seems appropriate somehow and of course will be a suitable source of confusion.
To be honest
That's about the same amount of ice I had in my manhatten when I was in Dallas.
(Obvious icon, I hope)
In tribute to El Reg....
In June 2011 http://www.hfs.org.uk/news.html listed the amount of furniture they had recycled using the SRU (Standard 'Register' Units).
(Yes, it was written in the evening after reading a Reg article)
why would you measure the surface area?
isn't it mass or volume that's significant with icebergs?
because
The measurements were made via satellite, so mass/volume is difficult to measure.
@I_am_Chris
How do you measure surface area of an irregular 3-dimensional shape from a satellite then?..
A&Q
Surface area of a whole iceberg is calculated by measuring the surface area of the underwater part and multiplying by 1.1.
Is the surface area of one Manhattan that of a hypothetical flat island, or does it include the buildings and population thereon at the present time?
Land
How do you measure the surface area of a land mass?
You pretend it is flat. I think using the same technique on icebergs is pretty straight forward. Besides, these icebergs are quite flat anyway.)
more troubling than inspiring
Or at least I'm shaken, not stirred.
Being a Brit I have no idea how big Manhattan is
so such a standard of comparison is useless. How big is it compared to more familiar islands? Flat Holm? Jersey? Isle of Wight? Isle of Man? Ireland?
Some other suggested standards:
Gniesenau/Scharnhorst (i.e. it could pass through the English Channel)
Severn Barrage (i.e. it could not get further up the Severn than a line between Lavernock and Brean Down)
Manhattan...
... is about 1/5th as big as the Isle of Wight. The corner between Cowes to Newport to Totland Bay would just about cover it.
At that size, it sounds like a Texan Manhattan to me - but not as dry...
moderate sized
So a 4 x 6 mile iceberg is considered "moderate-sized"? The ones I saw that were the size of ocean liners I thought were 'kin huge.
Bah!
The Wales isn't spikey enough for iceberg mensuration.
I wish Mr Haines would do some simple research before rushing to print.
Manhattens Since 2002 (CNN), Connecticuts Since 2000 (NSF), SI Units?
Manhattens have been in use common use since at least 2002 when the Ross Ice Shelf calved a large berg, C-18. "The new iceberg measures roughly 47 miles by 4.6 miles (76 km by 7 km), or almost ten times the area of Manhattan."- CNN May 2002
But Science Daily in it's recent article used the words "about equal" which is as imprecise as CNN's "almost".
Descriptions of the massive berg B-15, calved from the Ross Ice Shelf in 2000, introduced the unit "Connecticut" (from US National Science Foundation, NSF PR 00-12 - March 22, 2000, "nearly as large") . This was also, sadly, not a precise calibration.
Hence, while the Manhatten is in common use, (a) the Connecticut is the official unit for icebergs being mentioned first (March 2000) by a legitimate scientific source and (b) neither unit is fully calibrated as the precision has not been quantified at 273.16 K. Time for SI adjudication.
What's that in shark nipples?
(either volume or length will do.)
MilliWales
Damned metrication - shouldn't that be a Newport, a Lleneli, or perhaps a Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch?
The correct subdivision of Wales...
Waleses should be divided into individual Angleseys. The scientific symbol for Anglesey is ym, derived from the Welsh name Ynys Môn.
Hmmm
So whatever happened to the good old fashioned Meters squared measurement?
Early Unit of Measurement - just for interest
In earlier days (long before ISO), experiments with X-ray sources the radiation strength was quantified as so many 'Gillett’s'. One Gillett being the level needed to just pass through a standard razor blade. Stronger sources were measured using a staggered stack of blades on a photographic plate and the strength determined by counting the shadows.
Cutting-edge eh?
Manhattans and ice?
I suppose I should just be glad it wasn't Muppets.
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