Worlds population

[mightyWBA]

A few years ago I was told that the entire Human population,if stood shoulder to shoulder,could fit on the Isle of Wight.

Is this still true? Or would the Isle of Man be needed!

[gary baldy]

I thought this had been categorically been disproved (on this site aswell i seem to remember).

[gary baldy]

This nice man has done the hard sums for us:

http://www.ampneycrucis.f9.co.uk/PARK/Population.htm

[mightyWBA]

Gary I bow before your might and knowledge!

Cheers!

[mightyWBA]

Thats 665 square miles needed then,just under the size of Greater Manchester.

[kempie]

mightyWBA - your maths is a bit wrong there.

1054 sq. km = 407 sq. miles (or thereabouts)

[mightyWBA]

I was only guessing ! Damn these new fangled French measurements!

[gary baldy]

This sits alongside the myth about everyone in China all jumping at the same time will knock the earth off its axis.
Yeah right!

[kempie]

You can hardly call the original question a myth. At worst it is just out of date.

Using the figures in the above link the Isle of Wight could theoretically accommodate 2.75 billion people, which happens to be greater than the estimated world population in 1954.

[gary baldy]

Didn't say original question was a myth - the jumping Chinese thing is a myth.
So there!

[kempie]

So you meant {Not A Myth} sits alongside {A Myth}.

That makes no sense at all!

[gary baldy]

What?

[gary baldy]

Now i see!
No it doesnt make sense does it?
It did in my little mind anyway.
What i meant is (and btw i think you are taking this just a little bit too seriously kempie!) that the whole Isle of Wight thing is just as preposterous as the jumping Chinese thing.
Both silly little things that could never be prooved one way or another but make for great mental images.
Thats what i meant (i think).

[gary baldy]

Prooved?
I'm going to bed !

[mightyWBA]

Is it true all the worlds coconuts could fit inside Turf Moor?

[Lonnie]

Along the same lines as gary baldies last, when I was ar school, we were told that if all the Chinese, (them again), were to jump up and down at the same tome, they'd cause an earthquake that would devastate America

[gary baldy]

mightyWBA - you would have to remove all the racist scum first!
I'm willing to give it a go because the iq of your average coconut far outstrips that of the above mentioned minority and i would rather sit behind a coconut that the idiots i sometimes have to sit near.

[JudgeJ]

None of this takes into account how they would all get to the Isle of Wight. Even with WightLink and Red Funnel running at full stretch on all three routes, I can't see them managing it.

Honestly, sometimes these questions are so stupid !!!!

[emmagleb]

The theory behind the jumping Chinamen was based around Newton's Equal-And-Opposite Law, where a force acting on something has the equal force acting in the opposite direction. For example, a bag of flour sits on a table. Through gravity, the flour is pushing down on the table but the table is also pushing upwards with an equal force, otherwise everything would be flat on the floor. When a person jumps, they exert a pressure on their feet to lift them into the air, but the earth below their feet also applies a force upwards and against them. Gravity then brings the objects back together. The theory is that if enough people jumped then there would be enough opposite energy adn gravitational pull between them to pull one object to the other, and in this case the earth towards the Chinamen, therefore moving the earth if they all jumped together. The fact that they are Chinese is negligable, it was a population comparison more than anything.

In THEORY, it should work. Now all we need to do is proove it.... anyone got a big megaphone? ;-)

Sorry if slight details are wrong, I haven't done physics since finishing my a-levels. The main idea should be correct though.

[emmagleb]

And I agree with you JudgeJ ... I live in Portsmouth and there's no way on earth everyone would get to the IoW. Getting to to ferry would be hard enough seeing as there's only two roads into Portsmouth - whoever got there first would be very bored!

Another thing is this - did the area calculations take into account the hovercraft needing some land too? ;-)

[mightyWBA]

Back to the jumping chinamen,surely the average weight of an American is probably 4 times that of the Chinese,therefore if the Yanks got the first jump in China would be drowned!

As for access to the Isle of Wight been tricky,perhaps the worlds population could fit on the M25,half of Britains already there.