Geeky Dr. Who stuff
21 June 2008 02:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
3rdragonLast night the sci-fi channel was showing "The Unicorn and the Wasp" and "Silence in the Library," so I found an empty classroom in Neilson and watched them on the projector. I watched "The Forests of the Dead" on youtube this morning because a) I wanted to know how it ended b) ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chocochan will be here next Friday and I'd rather hang out with her than watch the second half of a Dr. Who episode that I don't think she's seen the first half of, and c)I wanted to be able to discuss it with people and it's not fair to them for me to have only seen the first half (and I wouldn't want to be spoilered by carelessness on the part of my friends).
A discussion of the fact that the Vashta Nirada all matured at the same time led to a discussion of whether the Vashta Nirada have their own planet that was clear-cut to make the books for the library or whether they lived in forests on many worlds and some of them happened to be in the trees that were made into books - which led to wondering how many trees would be required to make a library the size of a planet.
So, based on a number of assumptions (All planets involved are roughly the size of the earth; 9/10 of The Library's surface is covered with buildings; buildings in the Library are 3/4 of a mile high; annual paper consumption for a US citizen is less than three feet of shelf space; all trees are pine trees; the number I found online for feet of shelf space is less than or equal to the amount of total shelf space in Smith libraries, all of the books in the Smith libraries would fit in a 10-story building the size of Neilson . . .) and a collection of presumed facts found everywhere from the poster over the printers in Seelye, to variously reputable web sites, to Google maps, I can tell you that by my calculations, it would be necessary to clear-cut at least 42,062 planets, all entirely covered in trees, to make enough books to fill that planet-sized library.
Maybe I'll actually post about the content of the shows later. I'd be happy to discuss them.
chocochan will be here next Friday and I'd rather hang out with her than watch the second half of a Dr. Who episode that I don't think she's seen the first half of, and c)I wanted to be able to discuss it with people and it's not fair to them for me to have only seen the first half (and I wouldn't want to be spoilered by carelessness on the part of my friends).A discussion of the fact that the Vashta Nirada all matured at the same time led to a discussion of whether the Vashta Nirada have their own planet that was clear-cut to make the books for the library or whether they lived in forests on many worlds and some of them happened to be in the trees that were made into books - which led to wondering how many trees would be required to make a library the size of a planet.
So, based on a number of assumptions (All planets involved are roughly the size of the earth; 9/10 of The Library's surface is covered with buildings; buildings in the Library are 3/4 of a mile high; annual paper consumption for a US citizen is less than three feet of shelf space; all trees are pine trees; the number I found online for feet of shelf space is less than or equal to the amount of total shelf space in Smith libraries, all of the books in the Smith libraries would fit in a 10-story building the size of Neilson . . .) and a collection of presumed facts found everywhere from the poster over the printers in Seelye, to variously reputable web sites, to Google maps, I can tell you that by my calculations, it would be necessary to clear-cut at least 42,062 planets, all entirely covered in trees, to make enough books to fill that planet-sized library.
Maybe I'll actually post about the content of the shows later. I'd be happy to discuss them.
