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Fun Math Today! RIAA edition
14 years ago
General
Today's math exercise is dedicated to the RIAA, who recently tried to sue Limewire for 75,000,000,000,000 dollars (that's less than the global GDP, to put it in perspective)
My last post brought the article to everyone's attention, but I've had a couple people propose that if the world is to pay the RIAA its rightful dues we should do so in pennies, so as to truly underscore the magnitude of the sacrifice they have asked of we, the human beings of the world.
75 trillion is an amazingly inconceivably huge number, even of small objects like pennies. Lemme try out a little mass calculation...
75,000,000,000,000 USD = 7,500,000,000,000,000 pennies
A modern penny is 2.509 grams. x 7,500,000,000,000,000 = 18,817,500,000,000,000 grams
18,817,500,000,000,000 grams = 41,485,486,186,639 lbs
A-ha! Now, before we go on it pays to note that modern pennies are almost entirely made of zinc, not copper (some 97.5% in composition). The annual mining production of zinc is 12,500,000 tons. I don't know what amount exists in current stockpiles- but let's just suppose the RIAA insisted on freshly minted pennies.
12,500,000 tons = 25,000,000,000 pounds
41,485,486,186,639 / 25,000,000,000 = 1,659.419
We would have to mine zinc at its current rate for 1,659 years in order to obtain the raw materials necessary to pay the RIAA in new pennies! Oh, and in all that time we wouldn't be allowed to use zinc for anything else.
HOWEVER! Do not despair! As there are currently about 140,000,000,000 U.S. pennies known to be in circulation, we could cut that time down if everyone emptied their pockets- provided the RIAA is forgiving enough to accept old pennies of any condition.
Let's also have a look at transportation. Some commenters mentioned that said pennies should be delivered on a semi truck, but it must be all too clear now that it would require several semi trucks to supply the RIAA with its pennies. How many? Let's examine it!
Let's imagine that the RIAA wants the pennies delivered on standard flatbed trucks, the 18-wheeler variety so popular in the United States. There are many types of semi-trailers, but one set of regulations capping the amount of weight that can be carried on American roads. Generally speaking, the maximum weight allowance on U.S. roads is 80,000 pounds, but when you factor in the weight of a semi-trailer and semi-truck the acceptable weight of a payload is considerably less. Generally speaking, the maximum weight for a semi-trailer payload is 39,000 pounds- with some exceptions in certain states.
We determined that 7,500,000,000,000,000 pennies weigh 41,485,486,186,639 lbs.
41,485,486,186,639 / 39,000 = 1,063,730,415
Thus, it would theoretically take one trailer over a billion trips from the mint to the RIAA headquarters in order to deliver said pennies. Alternatively, it would require the whole payload to be loaded onto 1,063,730,415 trucks... and maybe a few more for logistical support of this massive convoy.
I don't have a statistic about how many active and functional semi-truck and semi-trailer combinations exist in the United States, but I'm pretty sure that the number doesn't exceed 300,000,000, which is our current national population. In order to make the delivery we would have to enlist the aid of truckers from nations around the world. In fact, there would have to be roughly one semi-truck + driver for every 7 individuals on Earth in order to complete the delivery in one trip.
Manufacturing and fueling a billion semi trucks would take such an enormous amount and such a wide variety of resources that I refuse to do the calculations. So there.
I am not a math wiz, so if I have made an error in the above article please inform me! I wish to get these statistics at least reasonably close so that we can all mathematically determine what a great collective of dolts the RIAA is.
My last post brought the article to everyone's attention, but I've had a couple people propose that if the world is to pay the RIAA its rightful dues we should do so in pennies, so as to truly underscore the magnitude of the sacrifice they have asked of we, the human beings of the world.
75 trillion is an amazingly inconceivably huge number, even of small objects like pennies. Lemme try out a little mass calculation...
75,000,000,000,000 USD = 7,500,000,000,000,000 pennies
A modern penny is 2.509 grams. x 7,500,000,000,000,000 = 18,817,500,000,000,000 grams
18,817,500,000,000,000 grams = 41,485,486,186,639 lbs
A-ha! Now, before we go on it pays to note that modern pennies are almost entirely made of zinc, not copper (some 97.5% in composition). The annual mining production of zinc is 12,500,000 tons. I don't know what amount exists in current stockpiles- but let's just suppose the RIAA insisted on freshly minted pennies.
12,500,000 tons = 25,000,000,000 pounds
41,485,486,186,639 / 25,000,000,000 = 1,659.419
We would have to mine zinc at its current rate for 1,659 years in order to obtain the raw materials necessary to pay the RIAA in new pennies! Oh, and in all that time we wouldn't be allowed to use zinc for anything else.
HOWEVER! Do not despair! As there are currently about 140,000,000,000 U.S. pennies known to be in circulation, we could cut that time down if everyone emptied their pockets- provided the RIAA is forgiving enough to accept old pennies of any condition.
Let's also have a look at transportation. Some commenters mentioned that said pennies should be delivered on a semi truck, but it must be all too clear now that it would require several semi trucks to supply the RIAA with its pennies. How many? Let's examine it!
Let's imagine that the RIAA wants the pennies delivered on standard flatbed trucks, the 18-wheeler variety so popular in the United States. There are many types of semi-trailers, but one set of regulations capping the amount of weight that can be carried on American roads. Generally speaking, the maximum weight allowance on U.S. roads is 80,000 pounds, but when you factor in the weight of a semi-trailer and semi-truck the acceptable weight of a payload is considerably less. Generally speaking, the maximum weight for a semi-trailer payload is 39,000 pounds- with some exceptions in certain states.
We determined that 7,500,000,000,000,000 pennies weigh 41,485,486,186,639 lbs.
41,485,486,186,639 / 39,000 = 1,063,730,415
Thus, it would theoretically take one trailer over a billion trips from the mint to the RIAA headquarters in order to deliver said pennies. Alternatively, it would require the whole payload to be loaded onto 1,063,730,415 trucks... and maybe a few more for logistical support of this massive convoy.
I don't have a statistic about how many active and functional semi-truck and semi-trailer combinations exist in the United States, but I'm pretty sure that the number doesn't exceed 300,000,000, which is our current national population. In order to make the delivery we would have to enlist the aid of truckers from nations around the world. In fact, there would have to be roughly one semi-truck + driver for every 7 individuals on Earth in order to complete the delivery in one trip.
Manufacturing and fueling a billion semi trucks would take such an enormous amount and such a wide variety of resources that I refuse to do the calculations. So there.
I am not a math wiz, so if I have made an error in the above article please inform me! I wish to get these statistics at least reasonably close so that we can all mathematically determine what a great collective of dolts the RIAA is.
Continuing with the US pennies theme, as each US penny (according to Wikipedia) is 1.55mm thick, 7,500,000,000,000,000 pennies stacked one on top of another would stretch up for 11,625,000,000,000km.
Now this is a big number. Really big. Really REALLY big. You might think that the US Debt is a big number, but that's just peanuts to this one. Because 11,625,000,000,000km is equal to 77,707 AU (Astronomical Units, distance from the Sun to the Earth of 149,600,000km.) For comparison, the distance from the Sun to Pluto is 5,945,900,000km - a mere 39AU.
Already we've determined that paying RIAA in US pennies would stretch beyond the friggin' Solar System - dwarfing the number of unused US dollar coins sitting worthlessly in warehouses which when stacked would "only" reach the height of the International Space Station. So how far will our penny mega-tower go up?
A light year is 9,460,730,472,580.8km - so our hypothetical tower of pennies would stretch 1.2 light-years - just over a quarter of the distance to Alpha Centauri at 4.2421 light-years. This means that if we stuck the RIAA members at the top of our penny mega-tower, and broadcast a radio message telling them what colossal dick-heads they were, they wouldn't know we'd insulted them for over a year and it would be around 2 1/2 years before we'd get the response from their lawyers.
In fact, our 11,625,000,000,000km stack of 7,500,000,000,000,000 pennies would be enough to go around the exterior of a Triganic Ningi (a "triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles - 10 943km - a side" coin) 354,107,648 times - leading to the distinct possibility that the RIAA will be the first organisation ever to own sufficient Ningis (8) to own at least one Triganic Pu. By my calculation, that makes it 44,263,456 Pus.
'Course, to produce the pennies in the first place would probably require us to mine the asteroid belt to get the metal...
Someone above mentioned that the money could be used for space travel, but from the look of things they really wouldn't have much of a choice! Also, you win for making reference to one of the more obscure parts of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I hope that all those Triangic Pus are more convenient than the Ningis.