Thursday, July 13, 2006

Measure everything!

Never ever believe what is written on packaging. I should know better, but when I bought an exercise ball that said it was 66cm diameter, I though it might be that size. I've spent most of the morning trying to scale up the map of the world to fit this ball. First attempt was too small. It would be I made it 70cm forgetting that I wasn't going around the diameter but half the circumference. So I tried again, having calculated the circumference. Now it is way too big. Huh?!

At this point I thought of just measuring it. Now of course anyone who wasn't so keen on maths would have done this first and got it right. The half a circumference is exactly 30", not a nice metric number. By my calculation that would give a diameter of 19" which is about 50cm. Nowhere near what the box claimed. Grrr. It doesn't really matter I suppose to most people using it for exercise, but if you are going to put a measurement on a box it really should be right.

As it happens this is going to make my life a lot easier as it will fit on the fabric much better. I'll try printing the map the right size now.

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