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Daily 128: Millions Monday - Suez Canal Ship Weight

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Summary

Student tested positive - school shut down previous week for quarantine. Trees blossoming. Yearbook meeting Wednesday. Assembly reviewing COVID policies, tabled for Friday. Staff feedback survey posted. Millions Monday: Suez Canal blocked by tanker - estimating weight: 20,000 containers × 100 people × 200 lbs = 400M lbs ÷ 2000 = 200,000 tons + 10% for ship = 220,000 tons (matched news reports!).

Transcript

0:00 Welcome to ANI In the Air, Under the Sky, By the Fire, and Around Baltimore, your daily
0:07 podcast briefing of all the goings-ons, ins and rounds, arts and ideas, Sudbury School.
0:11 So last week, we had a student test positive for coronavirus.
0:18 They are doing fine, their family is doing fine, they are in quarantine.
0:23 But in response, we had shut down for the week, and so I did not do any podcasts after
0:29 last Monday.
0:30 So here we are again on a Monday.
0:32 We're back in person.
0:35 The trees along Walther Avenue are blossoming.
0:39 It's a very beautiful site.
0:42 And it's a nice day, a little windy, a little cool, but all in all fairly nice.
0:50 We had some good rain and wind over the weekend, or the week, it's a little hazy now.
0:57 Personally I had something like 50 or 60 gallons of water in my garage, this house I bought
1:03 a few months ago.
1:05 Most rooms where some water comes in, we don't actually have anything in the garage.
1:11 But it's not really in our house, so it's not that big a deal, but yeah, got a wet vacuum,
1:18 and have to vacuum up the water out of there, so that's fun.
1:22 Okay, what happened today, well we had our announcements.
1:28 And our announcements, let's see, I believe Yearbook will be having a meeting about, well,
1:39 our Yearbook clerk Ashley will be having a meeting about the Yearbook on Wednesday and
1:44 kind of putting it out there in terms of deadlines and so forth.
1:50 Something kind of changes, you know, final kind of meeting before we're really launching
1:55 into Yearbook season.
1:57 So if you're interested in that, I think it's 1230 and probably will be hosted on Discord,
2:03 maybe the Office channel, I'm not really sure, just stay tuned, it always gets announced
2:07 on Discord I believe.
2:09 There might also be a virtual reality corporation meeting and maybe some other stuff, there's
2:16 an article club meeting on Thursday, I don't think I know what the item of interest is
2:22 yet.
2:26 But yeah, so that's the stuff.
2:35 What else, yeah, so we announced about what happened at Assembly last week, which was
2:44 kind of a couple hours of really kind of talking about some of our medical policies and trying
2:49 to figure out any changes that might need to be done.
2:52 We tabled it all, so we'll have another Assembly meeting on Friday and hopefully we'll have
2:59 some more consensus-oriented changes because this is a pretty big deal to have everybody
3:06 more or less behind.
3:08 So we're trying to figure that all out.
3:11 If you're interested, the meeting is at 7pm on Friday and if you have any ideas that you
3:17 want to contribute, by all means let us know as soon as possible.
3:24 The COVID numbers continue to rise in this area, unfortunately it is springtime so being
3:32 outside is a really great option right now, we encourage everyone to be outside as much
3:37 as possible while at school.
3:44 So for Millions Monday I was thinking of doing an item in the news, so yes, there was a cargo
3:55 ship that got, or tanker, that was stuck in the Suez Canal last week.
4:04 So the Suez Canal is this really great, wonderful shortcut that goes from, well it allows one
4:18 to avoid going around Africa, to go from the Middle East or China or India or all sorts
4:27 of those points there if you're trying to get to Europe or vice versa.
4:32 And so something like 10 or 12% of the world's goods get shipped through that canal, a very
4:39 busy place, and a tanker ran aground that pretty much blocked the canal.
4:49 And well they just got it free today, about a week it took and it's going to take quite
4:55 some time to unclog everything because obviously everything is kind of on a packed tight schedule.
5:02 So I thought I'd figure out just how much weight was involved because they had a real
5:06 hard time in moving that thing.
5:10 So basically the tankers are filled with these cargo containers and they're pretty big, some
5:20 people actually convert it into places where you can do, like holding some kind of class
5:33 or other thing, it can be quite sizable.
5:37 At one point in our history when we were thinking about our own place, some people were talking
5:42 about cargo container school where we'd have all these cargo containers that we could convert
5:48 and do stuff with that was mercifully not followed up on.
5:55 But you know, that's kind of the size of these things.
5:59 So I heard a factoid that this tanker contains something like 20,000 of these cargo containers.
6:06 I don't know if that's true, but that's what I heard.
6:10 It's very hard to estimate without something, you get the length and width of this thing
6:17 or in depth or whatever, I'm just going to start with there.
6:22 So the basic question is how much is a loaded cargo container, what's it's likely weight?
6:29 Well, so I've never really been done much with them, but I'm thinking maybe you could
6:40 squeeze a hundred people into one, like really pack them in there, maybe put them on top
6:46 because I think they're a little taller than human height, you know, really pack it in
6:50 completely tight.
6:51 I know in pandemic times that sounds like a complete nightmare and even on pandemic
6:56 times that sounds like a complete nightmare, although there are people who sometimes travel
7:03 in these things and it's not pleasant.
7:08 But anyway, so if you put a hundred people in these things and each person say is 200
7:15 pounds, so I'm probably, you know, it's a little bit on the heavier side of average,
7:20 but it's a nice round number.
7:21 Then you get 20,000 pounds per container.
7:25 Now if you have 20,000 containers and 20,000 pounds per container, that's basically eight
7:32 zeros and two times two is four.
7:35 So 400 million pounds, or if you divide by a thousand or so, maybe 2000, it's kind of
7:47 different definitions of tons, probably figure out that because I actually have an answer.
7:59 Um, uh, actually, oh, it's defined to be 2000 pounds.
8:09 Okay.
8:10 I thought it was a thousand pounds, 2000 pounds.
8:13 Okey dokey.
8:14 So um, anyway, if you had 400 million pounds, uh, and then divide by 2000 pounds to put
8:24 it into tons, then you get, uh, 200,000 tons.
8:32 And then if you take, um, uh, I don't know, maybe 10% of that is the weight of the ship
8:39 itself because why not 10% sounds like a reasonable thing to add on top for structural purposes.
8:46 Uh, then that would be 220,000 tons.
8:50 And that my friends is exactly what I found in an article or two about this.
8:55 I have no idea if that's an accurate weight, I have no idea if they actually even, um,
9:01 weigh these things or how they figure that out.
9:05 But um, yeah, 220,000 tons is reasonable.
9:07 Uh, originally when I started this podcast, I thought I was going to be off by a factor
9:12 of two because I was using a thousand pounds and I was just kind of sad about that.
9:15 But then I realized different people use different notions of tons and um, uh, yeah.
9:26 So anyway, actually I think most people tend to do 2000.
9:30 I just have in my head, a thousand, I guess, um, a metric ton is a thousand kilograms and
9:37 then I just apply that to pounds and that's not good, um, any who, other than my competency
9:48 with units, particularly tons, um, that was a pretty good successful guesstimation.
9:55 Of course, some sense I cheated cause I guess the number of, I mean, I heard the number
10:01 of containers and I really have no idea how I'd figure that out without knowing something
10:06 about the ship, but there you have it.
10:10 Uh, so, uh, Oh, I also forgot to mention, and I'll hopefully mention again, uh, we did
10:17 post into discord, a staff feedback survey.
10:20 Uh, if you are listening to this, please make sure to fill that out.
10:24 Um, we want to get, uh, feedback, particularly helpful, um, helpful feedback as to, um, yeah,
10:33 uh, what staff are, what the staff are doing well or not so well, um, and these particular
10:41 times, um, you know, anything, uh, related to the pandemic stuff, I mean, it's all brand
10:46 new territory, so hopefully you can, um, let us know.
10:50 Um, and of course, always happy to hear things in person as well.
10:54 Um, but, uh, if it's easier to just put it on the form anonymously, um, that's what you
11:02 can do.
11:03 Okay.
11:04 So, uh, thanks.
11:07 Uh, I will see you when I see you.