BBC adopts El Reg units We're delighted to announce that the Beeb appears to have got with the programme and adopted official El Reg units. In this report on the "lake that has formed under a glacier on Mont Blanc, and threatens to flood the St Gervais valley", the Corporation quantifies the potentially-deadly body of water as apparently containing " …
...or is 26 Olympic-sized swimming pools just not that impressive on a 'flood the valley' scale? I mean, OK, pools are big if you want to install them, but they're gonna be a hell of a lot less impressive when you pour them out over a *whole valley*. You ever have one of those kiddie pools in your yard? Looks pretty impressive until you tip the thing over and it goes, "Goosh!" into about 20 square feet of yard and disappears in 2 seconds.
Call me when it's 260 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
It's hard to picture in your mind the 65000 cubic metres of water as a 65x100x10 metre basin, as it's such an inconceivably abstract rule of measurement.
On the other hand, for geeks like us 112,984,512 Bulgarian airbags are equally abstract. It becomes much more concrete if you think of it in terms of 56,492,256 distracted Reg readers.
Mine is the one with 'The Joy of Sex' in the pocket, in case I would ever need a manual... o
So it only takes 26 olympic swimming pools to flood a valley does it?
Volume of water in olympic swimming pool = 2,500 m3
Volume in 26 pools = 62500 m3
Area of valley of valley (random guess of really small valley 100 acres) = 100 * 4 047 m2 = 404700m2
Depth of flood = 62500/404700 = 15 cm. Raging torrent then!
Or does someone not know the difference between meters cubed and cubic meters? Back to school for you.
Stuff the measurements, what I want to know is are they just going to throw this water away or are they going to do the sensible thing and bottle it for sale to rich mugs in posh restaurants at an ridiculous rate?
With glaciers now being something of an endangered species, it'd go down a bomb!
<-- Cos I'd rather have one of these to a similar quantity of Glacial meltwater...
What is an Olympic sized swimming pool?
Expressed in gallons or litres it's pretty meaningless, which also applies to cubic yards or metres to a lesser extent..
Best, I think, would be to describe a three dimension volume.
Three hundred Eiffel Towers stacked one on top of the other is another dumb representation.
Except it's not going to just magically arrange itself tidily at an even level right throughout the valley, is it? It's going to come surging down *through* the valley. Likely taking trees, people's houses, unfortunate engineers, etc with it. Frankly, if I saw 26 swimming pools worth of water *coming right at me*, I reckon it'd scare the bejesus out of me.
I think the problem here is not so much the total flood, but he effect of being hit by 26 olympic swimming pools of water in one go.
What's the El Reg equivalent of the Richter scale? I'm trying to think of something involving Dawn French impacting on something, but that just makes my brain curdle.
"a breathtaking 112,984,512 Bulgarian airbags"
Presumably 56,492,256 pairs.
Even allowing for the beer-goggles affect, that would be somewhere in the region of 25,000,000 'supplementary restraint systems'.
Truly staggering party that would be!
Although I must confess that I wouldn't know where to look
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first
;-)
..is what precision is applied to the measurement of "Olympic swimming pools" exist.
An Olympic swimming pool is water, plus the whole bricks-and-tiles thing to contain that water , pumps, filters, large container with chemicals., high chair to see the swimmers better, diving boards. You take all that together and the shape of it is actually quite awkward as a measurement..
/pedant
And life guards, swimmers, lane dividers, receptionists, changing rooms and the childrens pool (Hopefully without children as it will probably not flood until after the school holidays). Imagine that flooding your valley. The will be rubber rings and swimming caps all over the place. It'll make a right mess.
To measure anything in Olympic or Paralympic units without obtaining an official IOC licence, which is done through a complex ritual involving dispatching gold frankinsense and myrrh (but especially gold) to the four corners of the world and swearing eternal secrecy on Lord Coe's ring.
The ever reliable Wackypedia reports on the last flood from said glacier as:
"In 1892 a GLOF released some 200,000 km3 (2.6×1014 cu yd) of water from the lake of the Glacier de Tête Rousse, resulting in the deaths of 200 people in the French town of Saint Gervais.[12] GLOFs have been known to occur in every region of the world where glaciers are located. Continued glacier retreat is expected to create and expand glacial lakes, increasing the danger of future GLOFs."
So please write to the Beeb and advise them of their minor error.
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