Calculations about the absurd questions that pop up in daily life
One avocado (100 g flesh) gets dissected through three lenses: water, carbon, and nutrition efficiency. The math checks the popular "200-320 liters of water" claim against the primary dataset, tests how much transport mode swings the carbon footprint, and ranks avocado's nutrient-per-liter efficiency against four other fruits.
A car's sticker price is just the opening bid. Add in fuel, insurance, registration tax, maintenance, and resale value, and the total cost of ownership (TCO) tells a very different story. We run the numbers on a Hyundai Tucson in gasoline, diesel, and hybrid trims plus an IONIQ 5 EV — and the cheapest car changes not once but twice as ownership length and annual mileage shift.
We reverse-engineer harvest dates for grapes, peaches, citrus, and persimmons using GDD, plus a calculator that tells you which variety is actually at peak season right now.
A 10 km commute by car uses far more energy per passenger than a bus — unless the bus is nearly empty. We break down energy intensity (MJ per passenger-km) across eleven transportation modes, from walking to electric cars to rockets, then apply it to one real trip — New York to Los Angeles, about 3,940 km (2,450 mi) — to see which one actually wins, and how badly occupancy and grid mix can reverse the rankings.
Using the Biblical dimensions of Noah's Ark (300×50×30 cubits), we calculate total volume and compare it to the number of species and average animal size. The real bottleneck isn't floor space — it's how often the air needed to be exchanged.