How many for the entire Chinese population?
It sounds like a lot of balls to me.
Wacky Chinese inventor Yang Zongfu has unveiled his answer to Noah’s Ark – a radiation-proof, six ton steel-encased ball designed to protect a family of three from disaster. The bizarre bubble took eccentric businessman Yang two years to build and cost a whopping 1.5 million yuan (£150,868), according to China Daily. The …
A mate of mine works for TaylorWoodrowBarretWimpeyArsePipes the house builders, and he is reliably informed that the company is importing 300 of these balls for a new development! They will be sticking a slate roof and uPVC conservatory on each of them and then dumping them in the middle of the athletes village to form part of the regenerated East London's Olympic legacy!
Do they float? Let's do some arithmetic.
6 tons of steel is just under 1 cubic metre. Diameter 4m, radius 2m, surface area 16pi, say 50 square metres. So average thickness is 1/50 metre, or 2cms. Respectably thick but not like a tank.
Volume approx 30 cubic metres, density therefore 6/30 tons per cubic metre. Yes, it will certainly float (water is 1 ton per cubic metre).
Is it answer A from China Daily "and 1.5 million yuan ($23,400) in creating his safe bubble"
or
is it answer B from El Reg with " cost a whopping 1.5 million yuan (£150,868), "
....
that's right, its El Reg! Well done.... "1,500,000.00 CNY = 151,139.63 GBP "
China Daily reporter, must try harder!
Fecal matter occurs. Your ball is washed up somewhere. A crowd of people gather.
"The top began moving...
rotating...
Unscrewing!"
Next thing you know, somebody with a background in Science Fiction has a .30-06 trained on the hatch, and the first person out's head is a red mist.
U-LA!
is, as the photos accompanying the China Daily article (thanks for the link, Phil !) make clear, painted in large glyphs on the surface of the spheroid. But the Chinese term for Ark (方舟) literally means «square/rectangular boat». Wonder what Eukleides would have said about this attempt to square the circle....
Henri