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Like other reviewers I enjoyed many aspects of this book but also was stopped cold by the error regarding the weight of the Titanic. Just the three propellers of that grand ship weighed about 100 tons. Similar assertions re super tankers (i.e. 1 super tanker = three blue whales) are even more laughable. As grand as blue whales are, they are puny in comparison to a super tanker.
I also observed mixing and matching of units, such as the claim that the water pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is equivalent to 50 jumbo jets (which are used as a measure of weight throughout the book). Assuming the author meant 50 jets sitting on a square inch, he’d be ‘only’ off by about 3x (40kpsi claimed vs 16kpsi actual). The contact patch of a 747 well exceeds a square inch, so that wouldn’t explain the error either.
Thus, as entertaining as some of the comparisons are, I’m unconvinced how valuable a book is whose ‘facts’ have to be verified because the author/editing/publishing team evidently did not. Before you quote any of the many comparisons, I’d suggest a quick back of the envelope calculation to see if the author is at least within an order of magnitude. Thankfully, the back of the book has a series of tables that makes it relatively easy to do so.
How else can you explain the crazy statements that are in news stories about plastic bottles circling the earth, liquids filling Olympic swimming pools, or distances from here to the moon? I bought this as a cheeky Christmas gift and it was well-received by my engineering-oriented recipient. Seems like it would be a fun, light read to put in a guest room, too.
I have always been awful with measurements and estimating distance, size, and capacity. When I heard about this book, I thought it was a great concept and I was not disappointed.
This book will help you grasp really big and really small numbers. It shrinks time and distance to understandable human measurement quickly and easily, but more importantly it shows the value of doing this. Once you read a few pages of this book, you will quickly realize that numbers are not enough. The visual representations that author uses and gives readers are worth the price of the book alone. The next time you are trying to figure out or explain just how much information a CD can hold (150 King James Bibles or 2 Encyclopedia Britannica’s) you will realize how lacking the real data is . . . 300 megabytes.
For about 10 dollars, this book is a bargain. Its a great look at size and will give you a lot of information to digest in the future. One of my favorites was A Day In The Life . . .
If your life is only one day long, from 8AM to midnight, what would it look like? Born at 8 AM, you would not graduate college until 1 PM. You would likely become a grandparent by 7 PM, and retire by 11 PM. At midnight, your life would be finished.
Really puts things into perspective . . .
There are some mistakes in this book (ex. the three Titanics in a blue whale mentioned earlier). Don’t let that stop you from picking up a copy. For the most part, it is very accurate and will give you visual references for a sumo wrestler’s worth of information . . . which is the same as 40 tomcats, 16 koalas, or 2 John Does. Enjoy.
I was referred to this book in a chapter in [[ASIN:1118007522 Mindhacker: 60 Tips, Tricks, and Games to Take Your Mind to the Next Level]], another great resource if you are interested in this kind of thing.
I browsed this book which had some delightfully obtuse facts. Perfect for ‘irritating’ your colleagues or dinner party guests. If you want to earn the title ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’ this is the book for you. I was greatly surprised, however, when I noted a whole page diagram of a Blue Whale with 3 Titanics inside! How you get 46000 tonnes (ie 46 million Kgs) to fit inside a 180 tonne whale is beyond me, little alone 3 of them! Mr Weeks is out by a factor of 1000 fold. Apart from this oversight, a good bit of triviality.