Common Yardsticks

Jun 8, 2020Last updated: Apr 16, 2022

Historically, science has made great strides because someone cared to ask, how much? This is my concerted effort towards numerical literacy in the modern world. Assigning tangible quantities is immensely effective towards understanding the metaphorical "gravity of the situation".

All values are approximate and meant to facilitate back-of-the-envelope calculations. I highly recommend Measurement: A Very Short Introduction for a short history of measurements, and a crash-course in how different fields have evolved in assigning numbers to phenomenon.

Length

Neutrophil (White Blood Cells) - 12-15 microns
The Great Pyramid of Giza - 150m high
Eiffel Tower - 300m high
Burj Khalifa - 830m
Golden Gate Park - 3 mi
ISS Orbital Height - 250 mi / 420 km

Astronomical

Farthest object captured by the Hubble Telescope GN-z11 - 13.4 billion light years

Area

Golden Gate Park - 1000 acres / 400 ha

Mass

Large Shipping Container - 26 t / 30 US t

Time

ISS Revolution - 90 min
Genetic adaptations in Humans - 25000 years

Historical

See also Daniel Lemire's A short history of technology.

Oldest stone tools - 2.6 million years ago e.g. the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania
Fire-treating stones - 164000 years ago
Oldest lime products - 9600 BCE, Gobekli Tepe
Potter’s wheel - 5500 BCE
Cotton - 6000 BCE
Wool - 6000 BCE, clothes 4000 BCE
Glassmaking - 5000 BCE
Iron - 1200 BCE, popular usage
Modern Paper - 105 CE, by Chinese eunuch named Tsai Lun
Intergenerational research project - 65 CE, Seneca the Younger's research on comets
Black Death - 1347 CE, the plague wiped out a big chunk of Europe, brought by Mongols.
Printing Press - 1440 CE
Founding of Manila - 1571 CE, marks substantial, direct and continuous trade between Asia and Americas
Great Fire of London - 1666 CE, pretty much forced the rebuilding that led to modern London
Unified System of Physical Measurements - 1670 CE, by Gabriel Mouton in France
Modernization of Paris - 1852-70 CE, directed by Eugene Haussmann
World's first encyclopedia - c. 1751-1777, edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D'Alembert
First modern record of a "birthday" - 1772 CE
First electric elevator - 1889 CE, Otis
Color Presses - c. 1890 CE
First mass car ownership - 1908 CE, Ford Model-T, "assembly-line"
Penicillin - 1928 CE, by Alexander Fleming, a breakthrough in antibiotics
Solution of the DNA structure - 1953
SI units - 1960, at the 11th General Conference for Weights and Measures

Healthcare

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) - 1996

Percentages

Percentage of total physical money in the world: < 10% (7% as of 2020)

Temperature

Melting point of (virgin) Cocunut oil: 24 °C

Speed

Wildfire fronts: 30 km/h (short bursts, otherwise 10% windspeed rule)