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How Silica Gel Took Over the World

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225 points Hooke | 1 comments | 01 Apr 25 19:33 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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jchw ◴[01 Apr 25 20:49 UTC] No.43551172[source]▶
> That single gram of silica gel could have an internal surface area of eight hundred square meters—the size of almost two basketball courts.

For us Americans, that's about 8600 square feet...and around a seventh of a football field.

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wkat4242 ◴[02 Apr 25 00:57 UTC] No.43552784[source]▶
Yeah it's a bit of a weird way the article puts it. Measuring in square meters but then referencing basket ball courts which are almost nonexistent in Europe :). They should have used a football (but soccer, not the American kind) field. Though in that case I guess it will be a fairly small division of one too which makes it sound smaller than it is.

I honestly have no idea how big a basketball court is.

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1. jchw ◴[02 Apr 25 14:22 UTC] No.43557017[source]▶
I'd love to say that my comment was some commentary on the weirdness of the units, but really, it just stuck out to me, and I thought it'd be funny if I treated "gridiron football field" as the imperial system equivalent unit to the metric "basketball court" unit.

I rarely make comments on HN that are mostly just humorous and not actually intending to be on-topic... but every once a year or so.