| | Researchers with too much time on their hands...
The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute
Quotes from the article:
"We observed the teaspoons for a total of 5668 teaspoon days. The rate of teaspoon loss over the period of observation was 0.99 per 100 teaspoon days (95% confidence interval 0.76 to 1.28), or 360.62 per 100 teaspoon years. Assuming an average daily population of 140 people in the institute, this translates to a rate of loss of 2.58 teaspoons per person per 100 teaspoon years. Therefore to maintain a workable population (one spoon for every two people) 252.4 (194.3 to 328) teaspoons would need be purchased every year.
If we assume that the annual rate of teaspoon loss per employee can be applied to the entire workforce of the city of Melbourne (about 2.5 million), an estimated 18 million teaspoons are going missing in Melbourne each year. Laid end to end, these lost teaspoons would cover over 2700 km—the length of the entire coastline of Mozambique1—and weigh over 360 metric tons—the approximate weight of four adult blue whales."
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| | Posted 2/4/2006 4:27 AM - 3 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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