I was standing at the tram-stop, waiting for my tram, when the ad poster attached below from Karlsruhe's Technology Park caught my eye. It said, they are offering flexible office space, up from 10^11 nm^2.

I guess, that's what you get when the marketing guys want to look smart.

10^11 square nanometeres are a pretty small office space (as 1 square meter has 10^18 square nanometers.

The ad later says, space is up from 100 m^2, that's 10 meters by 10 meters. 10 meters are 10^10 nm, so the real figure would be 10^20 nm^2. Don't know how they came up with 10^11 nm^2.

I just wanted to let you check my figures, before I write them an email :-)

Harald

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

I'm guessing that they converted 1 meter to nanometers, 10^9 nm, and multiplied by 100 to get 10^11. Of course, they forgot to square the nanometers then.

More than once, I have seen adverts mentioning such and such a square footage, in a context where it can only possibly make sense if we square the number. Something like, this area is 200 ft^2, where it is reasonable only if it is 200 ft to an edge. (For those who prefer metric, 1ft = 0.3048m)

On a similar note, I have questions regarding calories.

(I assume TicTac mints are known abroad?). Anyway they claim that 1 such a tictac contains "only 2 calories". That is written as "2 kcal". kcal is kilocalories in my world though! oOr is this a language thing (Dutch/French notation...). Anyway which one is the correct value for 1 tictac: 2 calories or 2 kilocalories?

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Well to quote another thread (and to test links)
(gram-calorie)

Quote:

* Note, before some chemisty or physics major jumps on me. A calorie is technically called a "gram-calorie" and is the amount of energy needed to raise one gram of water from 14.5 C to 15.5 C. This is because as water becomes warmer it takes more energy to heat up, so you have to include the temperature range into account as well. Also, food calories are technically kilocalories and are equal to 1000 normal gram-calories.

200 ft. by 200 ft. = 40,000 ft.^2. the term "square feet" implies total area, not edge length of a square. the notation ft.^2 is the units notation for square feet.

taks

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goodbye richard pryor :(...

When it comes to nutrition, it is pretty usual that kilocalorie is meant when calorie is said.

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

As someone with a scientific background, I have a pet peeve here in that case!

So anyway, everytime "calorie" is said "kilocalorie" is meant. OK. Now recently I found out that the Ricola bonbon -which is larger than a tictac- contains less calories per unit than one TicTac, however it is Tictac which shouts about their low calorie contents.

Tell somebody who eats one Tictac that he could warm up a whole litre of water by one degree with that thing!

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

but the ricola bonbon is larger. tic tacs are the lowest, they're just tiny. very tiny. they do, also, have a very strong flavor for their size, though i prefer the curiously strong altoids.

taks

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goodbye richard pryor :(...

Uhm I might misunderstand what you are saying here, but:

Even though 1 Ricola bonbon is larger than one TicTac, one Ricola bonbon contains LESS calories than one TicTac.

If that was what you were saying, then "hear, hear!"

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

fewer, fewer, fewer!

sorry--pet peeve of mine. (hey, y'all get pet peeves; it's time the English major spoke up.) and lord, you hear a lot of it.

fewer dollars, less money, is the mnemonic I teach people. if you can count each item, use fewer. if you can't, use less. ergo, a Ricola bonbon, while larger, has fewer calories than the smaller Tictac. (though, by the time you get down to two calories, is it really that important?)

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"You can't erase icing."

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I would say that, in this context, "calorie" is a corruption of "kilocalorie". Yes, That´s widespread, and it´s a really annoying.

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I'm not sure if you are understanding me or not. What I am saying is, I see something advertised as something like "200 ft^2", when it is obvious from the nature of the thing being advertised that it must mean 40,000 ft^2.

Maybe they meant Nauticle Miles, that would be plenty of office space. Nahhh, you're in Germany, they wouldn't use miles, even nauticle ones.

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1,000 calories = 1 kilocalorie or Calorie.

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Altoids turned out to be nice, once I was able to get past the name, which made me think of a problem that interferes with sitting, only higher up (i.e. "Alt").

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We can tell from the context what they meant to say with their misuse of the terms, yes, but it still is incorrect.

In the USA at least....no wait, I will speak only for myself... We say 200 square feet if something is 10 by 20. We say 200 feet square if it is an area 200 feet on a side.

An ignoramus writing ad copy could come up with 200ft^2 thinking it said 200 square feet when in reality it indicates 40,000 square feet - 200 feet squared.

Oh boy.

Both in case of the difference between "square feet and feet squared" and "calorie and Calorie" I can only say

"S.I."

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The result of this "nonsense" is that you hear somebody on television saying "only 2 Calories" (mind you don't hear the difference between calories and Calories) while you see "<2 kcal" at the same time.

Pet Peeve, I know

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

No, the result of this is that when you cay "Only two Calories" on TV, everybody knows that the capital C is implied, because no one in the general public knows what a calorie is. With regards to nutrition, nobody speaks of calories. It'd be like measuring astronomical distances in centimetres...

...
...
...

Nevermind.

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"The plan does not involve mayonaise."
"... I knew there was a catch."

You can't take the sky from me.

The difference between astronomical units and centimeters is somewhat larger than in the case of nutrition.

You need several thousand Calories a day, while one piece of food contains several thousand calories. There's way too little difference in numbers to allow for such a confusing use of names.

But you're probablyy correct: it only gets confusing when you know a little bit more about it .

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Just got my t-shirt in the mail. :-)
They wrote, they will make a corrected version of the poster.

Harald

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

Today I spotted this gem. It is from a big advertising campaign of German natural gas supply companies. The ad features a map showing the natural gas pipeline network in Europe. It is especially funny considering current political events. Let's see if I get another t-shirt...

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

Oh wow. I'm so sorry I didn't get back to this at the time. The joke was that we do measure a lot of astronomical distances in centimetres (the AU, for instance, is defined in terms of cm). For some ungodly reason, cgs units are still popular in astronomy. Especially in undergraduate astronomy classrooms. Specifically in my undergraduate astronomy classes.

You'd think that after 10 years of teaching the stuff, the professors would come to realize what that simultaneous confused, blank stare from 25 different students that comes up at the first mention of the word "erg" means. No, we have no idea what you're talking about, Dr. Whatsitspants. Please don't continue on confused by our confusion.

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"The plan does not involve mayonaise."
"... I knew there was a catch."

You can't take the sky from me.

Looking at that, its amusing to see that Belarus gets a guernsey, but apparently 48m people south of the border don't get a presence! Then again, maybe they're just making a statement with this advert, they're with Gazprom on this one....

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer - renowned 19th Century German philosopher.

I recently encountered a different problem with square feet. I'm looking for a wood burning stove to heat my house. All the ads tell me how many square feet their stove will heat, when I would rather know how many cubic feet it would heat. The problem is that most people know the square footage of their house and not the cubic footage. Since my ceilings are about typical, I can deal with square footage, but I still think I can make a more accurate reading with cubic footage.

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