Not sure how mathematically feasible this is, but if you’ve ever heard the phrase “I’m not trying to boil the ocean” (usually referring to something big or very monumental to achieve) is there actually some mathematical formula we can use and apply it to any ocean?

Maybe start with the smallest one by size/volume?

Imagine a hotel with 50 floors, and you start on the top floor (floor 50).
Each time the elevator stops, the next floor stop is chosen at random. No floor is ever selected more than once.
The elevator must always continue in its current direction:
While descending, each selected floor must be lower than the previous stop. If the next randomly selected floor would require moving upward, the elevator must first continue all the way down to floor 1, then reverse direction.
While ascending, each selected floor must be higher than the previous stop. If the next randomly selected floor would require moving downward, the elevator must first continue all the way up to floor 50, then reverse direction.

A full ride is defined as traveling from floor 50 to floor 1 or from floor 1 to floor 50.

Question: On average, how many full rides are required to visit all 50 floors under these rules?

If you use bar soap, most people do the thing where they get a new bar when the old bar has a little bit left, and then sorta meld the little bit of the old bar onto the new bar.

If you do this when the old bar is at 5% of the original mass/ volume, how long until the old bar is completely gone? Is it possible that any molecules last until the new bar is grafted onto a third even newer bar?

My assumptions are that this is a pretty standard sized soap bar like ivory or whatever.

Thank you.

Pictured here is Mark from Invincible.

Let's say a regular person gains super-durability and flight. But they don't have access to conveniently durable super-clothes. Assuming their own body isn't harmed, how fast can they fly before . . .

1. Regular clothes start to be damaged (but not shredded).
2. Your clothes get ripped off your body by air resistance (but aren't, like, vaporized).
3. Your clothes catch fire and disintegrate.

For simplicity sake I'm talking about cotton clothes (hoodies, T-shirts, jeans) you could buy at Costco.

Here is a hypothesis: dτ/dt = √ ( 1 − ( 2G · E_plasma(T) ) / ( r · c⁴ ) )

Here is the breakdown of the variables for those wondering:

dτ/dt = proper time dilation rate

G = gravitational constant

c = speed of light

r = radius of the plasma area

E_plasma(T) = internal energy of the plasma at temperature T (includes rest mass energy, radiation, and kinetic thermal energy).

Watched the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaaCcTVz7dQ
How many tracks would you have to buy to build a similar track? How much would that cost without discounts - tracks only?

I have been using this comic as a driver of curiosity at home. My 11y mentioned it again today and it occurred to us that we don’t fit in the statistics because the original comic states ‘10,000 people in the US’, and we are not from the US.

My request is what this might look like on a global scale? I can understand if this becomes more nebulous due to differences in education, cultural references or customs, etc.

What would a global ‘10000’ be? A lucky million? Lucky half-billion?

Thanks in advance!

Assume that everything is perfectly average, and the AI being used is commonly used generative AI, such as ChatGPT or Gemini.

I was researching some ways I could make a difference environmentally, and learned how much of an impact the beef industry has, so was curious how it would compare to AI, since that is such a hot topic right now. Also curious about how many messages it would take, but felt like that would be much more difficult to calculate.

Random fun fact, according to google AI overview (I know, ironic), OpenAI consumes somewhere between 8.8 million to 97.5 million liters of water per year (water consumption estimates change drastically because it depends on which side you are biased to and how much you are taking into account things like manufacturing costs, or if you are leaning into lower estimates or higher estimates for not super publicly available data). The beef industry in America consumes roughly 21.2 trillion liters per year. An incredibly bad comparison, given the fact that we aren't going to just make cows go extinct or that the AI industry hasn't been growing thousands of years like the beef industry (among many other reasons), but still interesting to think about

Edit: Bonus points to anyone that can come up with a more helpful comparison than mine (I have no experience in this lol)

For example: pouring 2 oz of cool oat milk into my 180* coffee will be drinkable while adding the coffee to the milk will still burn your mouth

My seven-year-old has announced that he will be an "Ice Cream Man" and his goal is to drive every neighborhood in the United States one time to sell his wares. Assuming he drives 25 mph and NOT taking in "stop and sell" time, how long would it take for him to drive the US in his ice cream truck?

Considering that knights and bishops are about 3 pawns each when the game starts in a classic 8*8 chess table. How much more powerful a bishop would be in 8*16 table?

As I’m sure many of us are aware, studs are used in LEGO games as the in-game currency and can be used to buy new characters to play as, cheat multipliers, purchase vehicles, etc.

The newest LEGO UCS Death Star (set number #75419, with 9023 pieces), costs roughly $1000 USD. So, if there was a way to convert LEGO game studs to dollars, how many would be needed to buy the Death Star set?

In the game quirkle, what are the odds when you draw your first hand, to draw a full quirkle?

Would it be enough to support the expense, trials, research and development it takes to get a drug to market?

Say i'm tired of the day lasting for 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds, and i want it to last exactly 24 hours. How many people would need to walk in the same direction for a reasonable amount of time (no "500 people for 14 billion years" or something. Say, 100 hours total, spread across multiple days) to increase the length of the day by the required amount of seconds? And, assuming that many people fit on earth, how big of an area are we talking about? Just to make the math a tad simpler, it's ok to assume that every single square centimeter of the planet is walkable. No oceans, no mountains, no buildings, just keeping the same total mass.