I apologize for breaking your brain so early in the morning. If it helps, I've spent nearly 90 minutes on this, and I needed that time to work on homework this morning!

So Happy Mole Day, friends! I encourage you to spend a little time making your brain hurt with 6.022 x 10^23 of anything.

(13/13)

... we can fill 39 Rogers Centres with those baseballs.

If your head is spinning, between baseball squares covering the earth and baseball cubes filling Rogers Centres, I am sorry. It is really difficult to imagine how much 1 Mole of anything represents.

(12 / 13)

... we could fill up 39 Rogers Centres with 62.5 million baseballs.

Now remember, we were making earth-sized quilts out of 1 Mole of baseballs, and with 1 mole of baseballs, we could make 62.5 million quilts.

So if we represent each quilt as 1 single baseball, then ...

(11 / 13)

Okay, so the Toronto Blue Jays are in the World Series, and they play at Rogers Centre. If we want to fill up the Rogers Centre all the way to the retractable roof, that volume is 1.6 million cubic meters -- 1.6 x 10^6 of our meter cubes.

This means that...

(10 / 13)

But a mole of baseballs is 6.022 x 10^23 baseballs. If we wanted to make enough baseball quilts to use 1 mole of baseballs, it would take 62.5 million baseball quilts big enough to cover the earth.

But even 1 million is more than human brains readily understand.

(9 / 13)

it takes about 19 baseballs to cover 1 square meter. 19 baseballs doesn't make for a pretty quilt square, but we can trim the baseballs to make it work.

So if we cover the earth in our new baseball quilt, it takes 5.1 x 10^14 sq m x 19 baseballs = 9.64 x 10^15 baseballs to blanket earth.

(8 / 13)

What if we made each quilt square out of baseballs? It is World Series time, after all. A baseball has a circumference of 23 cm = 0.23 meters, so it mostly covers a square that is 0.23 meters by 0.23 meters = 0.0529 square meters. That means...

(7 / 13)

Now imagine our meter cube as just a meter square. So imagine lying two meter sticks on the floor to make a square: this is 1 square meter. If we made quilt squares that are 1 meter squares, then it would take 510 trillion squares to cover the earth. That's 5.1 x 10^14 square meters.

(6 / 13)

So if we had 1 mole of baseballs, how many times would we have to make a line of baseballs between the earth and the sun to use them all up? 34 billion times.

The problem with this is, the circumference of the earth is only about 1.6 million baseballs!

(5 / 13)

So maybe... the distance from the sun to the earth? It's 93 million miles or 150 billion meters. I mean, that's too huge for us to imagine anyway! But if you measured that distance in baseballs (at 3 in. per ball), then it takes about 1.77 x 10^13 baseballs to span the distance.

(4 / 13)

Okay, good. If you're at sea level, that cube holds 10 trillion trillion air molecules. That's 1 x 10^25, so more than 1 mole of air molecules.

Now set your cubic meter at the top of Mt. Everest. Here there are only 4 trillion trillion air molecules inside the cube, which is 4 x 10^24.

(3 / 13)

So let's imagine a meter stick. If you're in the US, think of a yardstick. Now imagine a cube that is a meter/yard by a meter/yard by a meter/yard. Are you holding that in your mind?

(2 / 13)

More: elmateolopez.com

Bonus links. :)
Climbing Mont Ross: (One climber's account: www.reddit.com/r/Highsofthe...)
The academic paper: hal.science/hal-02333859
There's feral (imported) rabbits on the island, but that's okay bc the feral (imported) cats prey on them: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_...

... it must be really super nerdy to gaze upon maps and not just look up encyclopedia entries of the places but academic danged papers.

And all because Formula 1 is racing today in Singapore.
(6 / 6)

... which led me to an academic paper on the two concepts and how they differ. I had just come across a Presqu'île in the U.S. yesterday that I hadn't seen before. And all of this led me to realize that...
(5 / 6)

... 1975! And here, as I took in the incredible terrain, I saw the word again: Presqu'île. Not only are there Presqu'îles here but also péninsules. They all look like peninsulas to me, so what's the difference?

Of course I googled (or, well, duckduckwent?) the question...
(4 / 6)

I had to turn on the satellite layer, of course, and found an insane looking road connecting Albert Faure to a small harbor. Then I moved back eastward, where the Kerguelen Islands had actually been visible as I had scanned the ocean. Mont Ross is there, and it was first summitted in...

(3 / 6)