20 Sep
2005
20 Sep
'05
12:46 p.m.
On Tuesday 20 September 2005 18:32, Henry Baker quoted Dan (the original doesn't seem to have reached me):
In discussions about this, a surprising factoid I learned is that the volume of 1 ton of ice is almost exactly 1 cubic meter. This is an easy rough estimate, but I'd never thought of doing it before. At first blush, that a ton of ice should be a mere cubic meter was amazing to me. (Either a ton is a lot smaller than it seems, or a cubic meter is much bigger.)
The latter. This is a special case of a general phenomemon: 3-space is bigger than we tend to think. (And space in dimensions higher than 3, more so.) -- g