this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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It's crazy that a 60 ton metal airplane can just fly (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 days ago by Buttflapper@lemmy.world to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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I flew for the first time on a plane last week and I've seen planes take off at the airport. It looks crazy. But being on one is totally different like holy shit. The thing just FLIES. It just.... Soars... Through the sky! Like whoa man. Wtf... It's crazy. With how much these things weigh, it's insane to me the thing can just go up and bam, there we are, we're flying now. Like wow... Dude crazy.

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[–] bitwaba@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago (2 children)

There are tons of tons, believe it or not.

There's the short ton (2000lbs), long ton (2240 lbs), and tonne (1000kgs) which are all measure weight. However there's also the shipping/freight/ocean ton which is a measure of volume (which is also different in the US and UK), and the register ton.

However I did make a mistake. The wikipedia page I was reading said the weight in t and long tons. I made the mistake of assuming they meant short tons - in reality when measuring displacement for a ship, tonnes are used (which is pretty sensible, considering you're displacing water and a liter of water to a kilogram of water have a pretty easy conversion formula formula...)

[–] repungnant_canary@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

I see, the common "Americans will use anything but SI", but in this case it's also the Brits lol

Thanks for explanation

[–] h3mlocke@lemm.ee 4 points 3 days ago

This guy tons.