Brontoatomic Humans · 3:06pm Dec 6th, 2022
"What a piece of work is a man!" Ironic in the original Shakespearean context, I know, but - taken literally - it really does work as coopted, sincere praise. The "quintessence of dust" is a natural marvel.
By how much? Believe it or not, we can quantify that!
"Hi, I'm Troy McClure! You may remember me from such educational blog posts as 'The Monty Hall Problem: Was There?' and 'How Many Glasses of Water Does It Take To Screw A Lightbulb?'"
Blog Number 211: Preposterous Prefixes Edition
By the way, if anyone's wondering: the "What a piece of work is a man?" quotation comes from Hamlet and is a known monologue spoken by the eponymous hero himself. It's called the "What a piece of work is a man?" speech. See here for the full details.
Anyway, to the more physical side of the matter...
Matter! Nature's colour-coded Kryptonite!
OK, let's get started!
Welcome home! By the way, is your house for sale?
By the way, I'm aware Lionel Hutz is a different character from Troy McClure, so don't bother pointing that out.
How many cells in a human body? Since I'm not a practising chemist, I'll take Google's word for it.
According to same, the traditional estimate for the number of cells in a human body is 37.2 trillion, or 37,200,000,000,000, or 37.2 x 1012.
If you want to get fancy with prefixes, a typical human is a multi-deca-tera-cellular entity (tera means "trillion", deca means "ten", multi means "multiple").
Actually, I might forego the "multi" and stick with the "deca-tera-cellular". It just looks less ungainly.
To put it another way, there are more cells in a human body than there are stars in a hundred Milky-Way-sized galaxies (assuming 100 to 400 billion stars in one of those, just to be clear).
N.B. The answers in these links might change at a later date as Google updates its results, so I can only claim that these are correct as of the time of posting.
The bricks of the human house. We use only the finest all-natural organic materials!
Next, how many atoms in a human cell? Roughly 100 trillion, or 100,000,000,000,000, or 100 x 1012.
Again, if you want to get fancy with prefixes, a typical human cell is a hecta-tera-atomic entity (hecta means "hundred"). I'm foregoing the "multi" again, partly because of the ungainly aspect, more simply because Google's official answer only suggests one hundred, not multiple.
Atoms! Never leave home without 'em!
So overall, how many atoms in a human body? Judging from what we've already seen, the answer should be 3,720 trillion trillion, or 3.72 octillion.
Note that we're bedevilled by the fact that these are rough estimates, so allowing that rough estimates yield rough margins for error (because no human could physically count every individual atom directly, computational workarounds have to be used), the actual answer at the very least shouldn't be far off. So long as it's within the same decimal range, we can at least be confident we're on the right track.
Anyway, enough waffling. What if we just look it up directly instead of trying to extrapolate indirectly?
Well, going by Google's first answer as of today (link here to the article: Dear Science: Could my body include an atom from Shakespeare?), according to chemist Suzanne Bell from West Virginia University, in a typical 150-pound human, there are 6.5 octillion atoms, or 6,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 6.5 x 1027.
Again, if you want to get fancy with prefixes, a typical human is a multi-bronto-atomic entity (bronto in this context apparently means "octillion"). Or bronto-atomic entity, if you find the "multi" ungainly.
🎵 One potato, two potato, four potato, eight... 🎵
I say "apparently means 'octillion'" because I'm only familiar with the prefix system for bytes of data, the prefixes of which are technically measured every 1,024 times the prior standard. So a gigabyte is 1,024 times the size of a megabyte, whereas a megabyte is 1,024 times the size of a kilobyte, which is 1,024 times the size of a single byte.
This presents a problem, as the larger it gets, the more it diverges from the standard decimal system. In the standard decimal system, a giga- is 1,000 times the size of a mega-, a mega- is 1,000 times the size of a kilo- and a kilo- is 1,000 times the size of a single unit.
The prefixes used in data measurement (e.g. the giga-, mega-, and kilo-) do overlap roughly enough with their more common use in the decimal system, though. So - for informal purposes - I'm confident in extrapolating "bronto-" from that specific data context to the more general case.
Have to admit, though, I've never stumbled across "bronto-" before, except as the Ancient Greek word for "thunder", as in Brontosaurus ("thunder lizard"), brontothere ("thunder beast"), or brontophobia ("fear of thunder, or thunderous noises generally"). As far as I can tell, "bronto" in the current context is actually an unofficial unit of theoretical interest only, as there simply isn't enough data in the entire world's data systems to add up that high.
Well, we gotta start somewhere...
Pictured: Brontosaurus excelsus. Not actually relevant: I just like dinos.
So, all together now!
- a typical human is a deca-tera-cellular entity (decateracellular, or just teracellular*)
- a typical human cell is a hecta-tera-atomic entity (hectateratomic, or just teratomic**)
- therefore, a typical human is a bronto-atomic entity (brontoatomic)
* I drop the "deca", and later the "hecta", simply because it's less pedantic and less of a mouthful to say.
** This is a bit unfortunate, as it looks too similar to a derivative of "teratoma", which is a medical term. I'm taking the risk because "teraatomic" just looks weird to my eyes, and excessive pedantry can be sacrificed for grace and tidiness sometimes. I'm happy to change my mind, though.
In case it's not clear, I'm very fond of The Simpsons, for a given value of "The Simpsons".
Well, thank you for reading, and I hope that was at least thought-provokingly interesting, if not actually entertaining. The quintessence of dust is the first step towards understanding what a piece of work is a man, indeed! And other mangled sayings!
"And now you know how it's done...
...please, don't do it."
That's all for now. Impossible Numbers, out!
Well it's no longer called the brontosaurus
Because they sorted out the fossils for us
And when they first dug 'em out of the rock
Yeah they put on the wrong head
Fun!
And I really don't want to be "that guy," but compulsive behavior is a bitch... or I am compulsive behavior's bitch... or something.
Anyway, the (recently) official prefixes are now ronna and quetta for 1027 and 1030, and ronto and quecto for 10-27 and 10-30.
5702048
The point is: bitchiness is involved.
Rats! That was on the Wikipedia page too, but I was so focused on double-checking the bronto- I found when asking Google, I didn't check if there were possible alternatives.
So... RONNATOMIC HUMANS?