Volume control...
Like many ladies of the female type I suffer from an issue with spatial awareness. As in, I’m rubbish at it. Whilst this so far hasn’t lead to too many problems, I’ve recently been engaged in the process of buying a house (got my offer accepted last night, yay, go me, etc) and have found translating measurements on floor plans into actual room dimensions quite challenging. So, being the uber nerd that I am, I decided I would try to train myself to be better at resolving 2D objects into 3D and generally trying to process spatial relationships. I did this by every time I went in a room, imagining a square one foot by one foot (which I had previously drawn out at home) and placing the squares across the floor so that I could measure the floor area. Then I imagined a cube, one foot by one foot by one foot and practiced filling the room with cubes until I could get an idea of the volume of the room.

Once I got the hang of this, I then started turning everyday objects into rough 3D geometric shapes and filling rooms with those, for example, imagining a chair as slightly elongated cube. I even toyed with different packing efficiencies of spheres and tried filling rooms with imaginary footballs.

A few weeks back I went with some friends to Canterbury Cathedral. Now, I’m a filthy stinking atheist, but I love me some church architecture. So I had a pootle round and look at the dead people and the lovely stone work, then I sat at the back of the nave and contemplated the glory of the building. Pretty soon, I’d started calculating the floor area adding in the transept and working out how many people I thought the building could comfortably seat. Calculating the volume was more tricky, the cathedral isn’t a regular shape, so I had to divide the ceiling section into triangular based pyramids.

I must have been sat there for a while, with a look of bafflement and consternation on my face, so a cathedral employee (presumably on stand-by to see if anyone looked in need of spiritual guidance) came over to ask me whether I was okay. I admit, I may have been a little brusque, as I was very close to having the answer to the ultimate question. They pressed me some more. I was fine, I assured them, I was just thinking. But it was too late. The moment had gone, never to return. And now I fear I will never know the answer to the question I had posed myself which was:

Just how many kittens would it take to completely fill Canterbury Cathedral and how cute would it be?

Sometimes I wonder why my mother didn’t have me drowned at birth...
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 9:20, 13 replies)

they would need
some sort of contoured cage to prevent the bottom ones being crushed. A regular, albeit small cage would not suffice.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 9:50, closed)

But this is science
therefore you can make approximations.

The first of which is 'assume the kittens are rigid spheres'...
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 9:55, closed)

i had them as
rigid cylinders. but cute ones.
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 9:58, closed)

And don't forget to put them in a vacuum

(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 11:16, closed)

leading to a variation of the punchline of my favorite ever joke
"But of course, that only works for a spherical horse in a vacuum..."
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 12:35, closed)

I love that joke
Yay for science geekiness! :D
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Tue 6 Jul 2010, 15:29, closed)

But .......
They would only crush up to a point, being for the most part, an incompressible liquid. This would make the calculations easier, although one would have to define a "standard" kitten.Perhaps this could be achieved by blending a specific number kittens into a pulp and calculate the average.
(M61A1 CUPID- STUNTS, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 10:29, closed)

hmmm
*ponders the non-newtonian fluid behaviour of kittens and wonders about writing a grant on it*
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 10:42, closed)

The fluid is probably compressible
to some degree. You need to factor this into the model.

What's the SI unit of kittens? The fluff, perhaps?
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 14:06, closed)

Perhaps an alternative could be
to get a reasonable representative sample of kittens and use water displacement (ensure that said kittens are kept under water long enough to allow the water to settle) to measure the volume of each kitten, from this you can calculate an average to arrive at a "standard kitten" volume. The handy thing about this is that, once calculated the "standard kitten" may then be applied in almost any situation requiring a measurement of volume.
(M61A1 CUPID- STUNTS, Sat 3 Jul 2010, 10:15, closed)

I did think my spatial awareness was good, being male and all
but I still managed to scrape my car bumper last week, despite having parking sensors. Bugger!

So, having recently gone through the same process of moving home, I just went round with a measuring tape and drew scale drawings. I even measured my furniture and plotted it on the diagram.

My girlfriend was more concerned about buying new cushions in nice colours though.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 9:54, closed)

You went to Canterbury Cathedral
and you didn't come and say hello?!


I'll measure it with kittens over the weekend.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Fri 2 Jul 2010, 10:12, closed)

This sounds like rather a handy thing to be able to do.
Do you ever check the answers you come up with?
(waxdart hello., Fri 2 Jul 2010, 14:56, closed)