BBC: Monster cargo ship delivers '863 million tins of baked beans'
The BBC has sensationally quantified the cargo capacity of a new behemoth container ship as "863 million tins of baked beans". Auntie's penchant for describing very big, heavy, strong or long things in terms mere mortals can get their heads round is well known to Reg regulars. Last year, it described the constricting force of a …
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"It's the size of Texas, Mr President."
Well, it worked in Armageddon.
70's Maths question of the day
Each bean is approximately 0.5 cubed -
An Olympic swimming pool must be 50m x25m x2m
Therefore approximately 5 billion beans fit in the pool.
The question is how many pools would 863 million tins of baked beans fill?
I do know that there are on average 328 beans per can.
**Please show your working out in the margins
Re: 70's Maths question of the day
This is excellent news my presumably small friend.
From this I can work out how many olympic swimming pools fit on the boat, and thereafter I'll clearly always be able to work out how much of any damn thing I can transport on this boat at any point as long as it's sizeable enough to be measurable in swimming pools. Or if it's the same size as a bean.
As long as whatever it is is no longer tinned of course.
@ukgnome Re: 70's Maths question of the day
We're all wondering: How do you know how many beans there are in a can? Furthermore, what size of can and what brand?
Re: @ukgnome 70's Maths question of the day
Because ex-IT bod and welsh superhero told me
Although according to the Heinz website the answer is actually 465 beans per standard 415g can (approx)
I guess I got my can sizes wrong
Re: @ukgnome 70's Maths question of the day
I think you got canned there...
"....you could fit 36,000 cars or 863 million tins of baked beans."
I reckon that comes out as 277-and-a-bit Olympic-sized swimming pools. Anyone care to calculate the ship's displacement in pools to give us the number of additional poolfulls required to sink it?
Assuming that standard TEU size to be correct[1] and the number of same the thing can carry to be accurate.
[1] Apparently the height of a TEU is a bit of a moveable feast.
what is the length and width of this ship measured in Standard London Buses?
..or about one years worth of beans
http://www.heinz.co.uk/ourcompany/aboutheinz/trivia
..but since the UK makes them..and the UK eats them, it'd be a bit pointless putting that many cans into
shipping containers and onto such a vessel.
maybe they could quantify that number in a different way - eg how many charity bean baths would that number fill?
better than the Daily Mails coverage...they'd have said how many illegal immigrants could hide in aforementioned containers.
Me like
A can of beans is a handy proxy for both size and weight. Anyone know the appropriate conversion ratio for SI Jubs? Also, how many Chuck Norrises are required to move these chuffing ships?
Re: Me like
"how many Chuck Norrises are required to move these chuffing ships?"
One. And he can move all of them at once.
Very disappointed
They should have said how many Olympic-sized swimming pools could be contained in the ship.
Or would they make it sink?
Re: Very disappointed
Holy shit! Do they make our Olympic-sized swimming pools in China now?
Beats me...
I couldn't picture that much baked beans, until I calculated that it was enough to fill one of the new breed of super-sized container ships.
Too many eggs in one basket
There was a program about Emma Maersk some years ago where people from Maersk where discussing how big those ships could become. Technically much bigger but according to those chaps insuring the cargo has become a limiting factor. The value of the cargo is just frightening for the insurance companies.
Re: Too many eggs in one basket
These Triple E's will still be smaller than Seawise Giant (aka Happy Giant, Jahre Viking and Knock Nevis) an oil tanker with 3 times the cargo capacity by weight.
Also, these big ships are inflexible, they can't fit through some of the major worlds waterways or dock in many harbours. If wikipedia is to be believed the Triple E can't use any port in either North or South America
Re: Too many eggs in one basket
Doesn't matter.
Big ships are needed when you have to go a long way, China-Europe cheaply.
Smaller ships are efficent enough on the shorter China-Canada route
Then you have to do something with the cargo. If you offload 10,000 containers in Felixstowe or Rotterdam you can have the stuff anywhere in Europe quickly and cheaply.
If you unloaded all of that in Long Beach it would be expensive to truck it to Chicago - so multiple routes with smaller ships going to more cities makes sens for a bigger low density continent.
Re: Too many eggs in one basket
Seawise Giant (aka Happy Giant, Jahre Viking and Knock Nevis) just a memory and not a good one. Long gone.
However speaking of insuring the cargo the oil is cheep as hell compared to what those containers contain.
Re: Too many eggs in one basket
Chicago is a bad example. It is a major inland hub for container trains. The US loading gauge allows double stack trains, (two containers high) so huge mile long trains take the containers to the container yards in Chicago, relatively cheaply, where they are shunted off to trains to other inland hubs (or Canada) or put on trucks for local or express delivery. Long Beach to Chicago takes about 5 days by DS train.
As a Japanese shipping line, we are as likely to use our biggest ships transpacific as to Europe.
@Joseph Haig
"Is it gas powered?" One Wärtsilä diesel, 100.000 hp and one huge prop. PS. why not check Wikipedia before asking.
Re: @Joseph Haig
Well, um, it was, sort of, a joke so, ...
Oh, forget it.
Re: @Joseph Haig
Don't worry Joseph, I got the joke, although the icon should have been a clue Lars.
863 million actual tins or the contents of 863 million tins arranged to make optimal use of the available space?
I need to know.
Without being toooo pedantic...
"The standard "twenty-foot equivalent unit", measuring 6.1m long, 2.44m wide and 2.59m high" Actually, the clue is in the name; a TEU is exactly 20' x 8' x 8'6". Metric units are an approximation. Actual containers vary a bit from this: High-cubes are taller; 40 foot and 45 foot, are naturally longer; Reefers are refrigerated, so need a power point while on board, so only a limited number can be carried; then there are flat-packs, open-tops and Out-of-gauge loads. Bog standard 1 TEU containers are used as a unit of measure but you would never get a ship full of them.
I remember when 5000 TEU ships were considered the behemoth's knees, now we are using many 8000 TEU vessels, but we are not likely to follow in Maersk's wake yet, especially in the current economic climate.
big?
these ships are not that big.
Space. now thats big
You may think its a long way down the street to the chemist, but thats just peanuts to space!
I saw a super-massive cargo ship off the coast of Torquay (of all places) last week. It was so huge, even on the horizon, that it actually looked unreal, just a vast squatting grey silhouette dwarfing the oil tankers parked in its wake.
18,000 shipping containers. Now that would make Microsoft a bl**dy big floating data centre!
Power & cooling would be OK. Network connection might be a problem though! Undersea fiberoptic cable?
Interestingly, if it was in international waters, who would have juristiction over the data and applications hosted on it? Maybe it will be a "Mega" ship!
Funny if you think...
that - by a very rough estimate - you could feed all of Great Britain for a couple of days with the load carried by one such ship. And there's a lot more than one of comparable size berthing at British ports each day (including non-food ones of course). Kinda puts international trade into perspective.
Then again, we don't all want to live on beans...
Can we cut the chatter and get on to things that really matter? Such as:
What is the cruising speed of this vessel in "furlongs per fortnight" or "angstroms per jiffy"?
What is the gravitational attraction in "micro-newtons" between the ship (sans baked beans) and a snow flake at a distance of "182.2 Smoots"?
What is the Orbital Period of Crows around the Nest in nano-light-years?
Took a bit.
Lets just remove the fact that ships are bound to a sea, and unlikely to be found in space. If said ship would be found in space, then the gravitational attraction between said ship, and a particle of snow(how did it get up there and what was it thinking?!), and ruling out any annoying gravitational body's in the area, then the attration in newton should be 0.00000275436 over a distance of 182.2 Smoots when using the averaged Smoot for 1.70 Meters.
Or in Micro Newton: 2.75436646909
Also not that I used the unladen ships weight.
But, we should launch this ship into space, just be sure!
Re: Took a bit.
Fixed it for you...
182.2 Smoots plus or minus one ear
"Each will contain as much steel as eight Eiffel Towers"
So "none" then...
Re: "Each will contain as much steel as eight Eiffel Towers"
Correct, sir - the Eiffel Tower is made of wrought iron. For what it's worth, it weighs 7,300 tons.
Of ships and sails and sealing wax
As Jobs poor tin of a ship joke had its time, now have a look at what old man Maersk has (or had) a Nautor Swan. The difference between a landlubber and a seaman.
How large a can of baked beans?
Are they the Costco gallon-o'-beans sized cans?
I demand answers!
I know I am slow of reading but...
How does 60 miles worth of containers (30 trains x 1 mile x stacked 2 high) = forty-six and a half kilometres?
Maersk's own measurements
Obviously they haven't heard of baked beans, they say 3.64 billion iPads. (http://www.worldslargestship.com/)
What about the BBC's asteroid comparison last week...
I still haven't got over the "olympic swimming pool" from outer space that narrowly missed us.
A wonderful image of Michael Phelps flippering up and down in outer space, silently cruising between the Earth and the moon - made me smile.
Stacked
The answer is 46,620 metres, which by our reckoning represents 13.32 per cent of the orbiting outpost's average height of 350km above terra firma
They could have put the containers on end, in which case you'd reach 109.8 km (784285.7 linguini, 11910.19 double-decker buses, 794 brontosauruses). And Felix Baumgartner wouldn't have needed that balloon, he could have climbed the stack and basedived.
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