Let me know if you see any new bugs that the changes might have caused, or any old ones I can try to fix while I’ve got the site open. I’m considering making some other improvements to the site, but there’s a lot of junk I want to clean up in the code before I add any more big pieces.

Fellow capper Sans Serif
reposted it to his fb, where one of his friends suggested there might be a sweet spot where an elephant could still breathe without being crushed. To see if that’s so,  we first need to know how much weight that  elephant column puts on an elephant at a given height. [If this were basic cable, this is where we'd put a "science content" warning. Since it's not, we won't. If you flunked out of AP Physics, just ignore the formulas and you should get the gist.]

Adapting from the first source I found, the weight of a column of height h would be

W(h) = R * h * W_e  / H_e * (R + h)

where R is the radius of the earth at the bottom of the stack, and W_e and H_e are the respective weight and height of a unit elephant. So, if we take H_t as the total height of the stack, the total weight would be

W_t = W (H_t) = R * H_t * We / H_e * (R + H_t)

To find the weight, WA,  pressing down at height h, we just subtract the weight below from the total weight and do some mild algebra to get:

WA(h) = W_t – W(h) = C * (H_t – h) / ((R + H_t) *(R + h))

where C is a constant defined as

C = R² * W_e / H_e

So, let’s see if the first space elephant, sitting at the so-called edge of the atmosphere, the Kármán line, h = 100 km, might have survived the weight on top of it.  We’ll treat the earth as a perfect sphere and use R = 6,371 km. To get a (relatively) short stack of elephants, we’ll go with the more pessimistic results of our casual googling and put “every elephant in the world” at 326,000.  We’ll also go with an average height of  H_e = 3.4 m, which puts the whole stack at H_t= 1,108 km. Plugging these all in, we find a weight of just under a quarter million elephants pressing down on the first space elephant.  Without looking up the compressive strength of an elephant, I’m going to say that’s still well in the crushed elephant range. So, there’s no sweet spot in the breathable but uncrushed range.  I’d further wager that’s not just crushed, but liquified too.  So, in addition to the space elevator we’d probably have to build to carry this all out, we’ll also need a tube extending up into orbit to hold our Dumbo gumbo. Which would be some pretty advanced technology, bu wasn’t it Arthur C. Clarke who said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a slurry of elephants?

By way of apology, here are some stupid sound clips to sneak onto friends’ (ok, acquaintances’) playlists.   What, why are you looking at me like that?

So, if you haven’t added us yet, go for it,or you know a capper who’s not on the fan list at our FB page, politely pester away.

The fine print:

1. Since I won’t be entered in the drawing, we actually need to hit 101 fans to make this happen.
2. The winner will be determined by assigning each of our first 100 non-me fans a number based on the order they joined in (for instance, Sharon would be 07, Helen 49). The winning number will be chosen based on the last two digits of the Dow’s close on the first full trading day after we hit 100. So, if we reach it on a Monday, and the Dow then closes at on Tuesday 9,497.34, our fan 34 would win.
3. Numbers will be assigned when we hit 100.
4. Winners will be informed via Facebook and must reply in a reasonable length of time with an email for the gift certificate or a mailing address for the DVDs.

We got to see the wonders of how a bot is built, and Joe even made us some Servo heads that we were able to be goofy with at the show (hoisting them when Servo was mentioned or alluded to).

Anyway, the show was excellent, and I’ll be running some of the pictures for your capping pleasure Monday June 22 @ 8 PM Eastern on Inventing Situations. You can preview (and well, caption) them by clicking the image here (that’s the end of the stream, the start is here).

And speaking of capper gatherings, dates for all six cities on the next leg of the Cinematic Titanic tour have been announced. A few cappers have already expressed interest in going to the Philadelphia shows (incl. yours truly) on June 12th and 13th. If you‘re organizing a gathering in your neck of the woods, let me know and I’ll help get out the word.

I’m definitely thinking I’ll have to do a NYC to Philadelphia road trip, dates depending.

And do let me know if there’s any other lingering bugs from the improvements.

(Though you should probably hit refresh at least once before letting me know.)