Talk:2526: TSP vs TBSP

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 17:33, 11 October 2021 by MrYellow04 (talk | contribs) (Changing the statement "All these units have fairly limited uses in cooking", which is hard to cite, to "All these units are very large and not commonly used in cooking" and citing (https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-cooking-resources))
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The title text refers to lyrics in the Alanis Morissette song Ironic -MonteCarloe 172.70.126.211 16:59, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I wonder why Randall used 1024^4 instead of 2^40. -MonteCarlo 162.158.74.150 17:10, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

To highlight the similarity between 1000 and 1024, I suppose.--Pere prlpz (talk) 18:03, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
And a byte is 1024^0 bytes, kilobyte=1024^1, megabyte=1024^3, etc. Talking entirely in terms of 2^10N loses the sheer simplicity and easy approximation.
(Though not as much as 'short' -illions. 5.45 trillion? That's 5, then the decimal padded/shortened to exactly three figures (450), then three sets of three zeros. Stupid system.) 172.69.54.136 18:20, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

A table with common or interesting volumes measured in teraspoons would be a good addition.--Pere prlpz (talk) 18:03, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

he did kilonife kiloknife because the k in knife stands for kilo 172.70.34.91 18:26, 8 October 2021 (UTC)Bumpf

I thought this was a play on storage (esp. hard drives) advertising 1000-based capacities (1TB=1000GB) whereas computers tend to measure in 2^ sizes (1TB=1024GB) to make them seem bigger on the packaging. IIRC some cloud platforms distinguish between GB and GiB of Ram, for instance. Mike-jed (talk) 19:38, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

XKCD again with its timing… Just 3 days ago I used a TBSP when I should have used a TSP. Two comics earlier, #2524, was about a long-period comet coming close to Earth and on the same date (October 4th) as a long-period comet coming close to Earth in the movie "Your name". Fabian42 (talk) 21:47, 8 October 2021 (UTC)


1 mL = 1 cm * 1 cm * 1 cm. 1 m = 100 cm. 1 m^3 = 100 cm * 100 cm *100 cm = 10^6 cm^3. 1 tera-whatever = 10^12. 10 ^ 12 / 10 ^ 6 = 10 ^ 6. I respectfully submit that the estimate of how many cubic meters there are in a tea-teraspoon is off by three orders of magnitude, and should be approx. 5 * 10 ^6 cubic meters, not 5 * 10 ^ 3 cubic meters. However, it is late afternoon locally, and my math skills typically erode severely at this time of day, I could well be embarrassingly wrong. Someone meticulous and more awake should check and cast a deciding vote. -E. Schori

Alanis Morissette describes a situation where the ratio between available spoons and required "nifes" is 10:1 (10 kspoon vs 1 knife). Why doesn't the title text say "one teraspoon when all you need are 10^8 kilonife"? Is there a reason I don't get? Or does it simply sound better to have a single kilonife? Or are the numbers from the title text arbitrary? This conundrum is totally bugging me out! -mape

Most importantly: What is a nife? In German "Nife" is the name for Earth's inner core (Ni+Fe = Nife). But in English the word doesn't seem to exist. I get the joke of a knife being 1k nifes (or nives?) but the joke would be even better if "nife" existed in the first place. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 11:20, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Addendum: If "nife" does indeed not exist wouldn't that mean that a (kilo)nife is simply nothing? (Yes, I know that I'm overthinking this, but I find it curious) Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 11:23, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

It seems nearly impossible to add a citation to the statement that "All these units have fairly limited uses in cooking". Perhaps it might be better to state something along the lines of "All these units are very large and not commonly used in cooking", and then cite the NIST.gov Metric Cooking Resources page (https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-cooking-resources) which lists TSP & TBSP but does not list Teraspoons and Tebispoons? MrYellow04 (talk) 17:33, 11 October 2021 (UTC)