This might seem an odd question, but it's an exercise in thinking about scale. Maybe you've seen one of those videos that try to give a sense of what this means (examples online if you want to search).
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They begin with the almost infinitely tiny. The human brain was never engineered to picture something like this, which leaves us with mathematics to describe it.
Better, perhaps, is to imagine yourself at the top of the Grand Canyon, trying to spot a flea on the bottom.
Even that is probably not an adequate example. More likely, it'd be looking for the same flea from the moon or from Mars.
Zooming back out to the cosmic scale leaves us with a similar problem, possibly worse. A human is now impossibly small in comparison. Again, our brains are ill-equipped.
Since many people read newspapers on their electronic devices, our answer there is obviously zero.
For the paper version, estimating the number of ink molecules in an Ask Fuzzy column is almost as difficult, but with a bit of creative accounting, we can guess.
A few wild assumptions and questionable mathematics leads us to the bold conclusion that there are 297,625,272,622,646 ink molecules in a typical Ask Fuzzy column.
This relies on the approximation that the letters end-to-end would stretch to about 10 centimetres.
Even after excluding decimal places this will induce a case of number-numbness similar to looking at, say, the federal budget. We can read the number, but it's nearly incomprehensible.
MORE ASK FUZZY:
As you'd expect, producing ink has grown into a complex industrial process.
There are eight stages, from selecting and preparing ingredients, to mixing, milling, filtering, to QA, packaging and distribution.
This allows us to introduce another obscure technical phrase: 'vacuum emulsifier homogeniser'. As the name suggests, that machine is designed to ensure a homogenous texture and colour.
A sand mill grinds ink into smaller particles, while a Three-Roll Mill exerts shear and compressive force to further the process.
The goal is reliable quality because when you buy a pen, you expect it to work as promised.
Diamine Grey should never look like Diamine Green.
The other goal, of course, is the greatest output for the least cost. Traditional ink-making is a time-consuming, labour-intensive affair is now high-tech.
The Fuzzy Logic Science Show is at 11am Sundays on 2xx 98.3FM.
Send your questions to AskFuzzy@Zoho.com; Podcast: FuzzyLogicOn2xx.Podbean.com
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