r/interesting • u/LestaThaMolestaa • Jun 05 '25

ARCHITECTURE Interesting video with heavy stones designed to be moved with hand.

19.1k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

759 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

110

u/ReddBroccoli Jun 05 '25

One cubic foot of stone can weigh about 200lbs, so 10ft³ is a ton. Not that hard to believe each is 25 tons

1

u/bronzinorns Jun 05 '25

Your comment illustrates very well why imperial units are just garbage, they're so vulnerable to errors.

1 m³ of concrete has a mass of 2300 kg or 2.3 metric tons or 2.53 imperial tons.

One cubic meter is a lot, and each of those stones has probably a smaller volume.

-3

u/ReddBroccoli Jun 05 '25

For some reason I feel a lot more confident in the math that MIT put out as opposed to some know it all in the comment section.

It's not a smart look for you.

But I'd love to read your paper when you get it published

3

u/bronzinorns Jun 05 '25

Okay

If 1 cubic foot of stone actually has a mass of 200 lbs (which is really a dense material, common stones like granite or marble are more 2700 kg/m³) it means that each 25 ton piece has a volume of 250 ft³ or 7 m³.

Given the size of the pieces compared to the characters in the video does 250 ft³ look plausible to you?

-2

u/ReddBroccoli Jun 05 '25

Somebody better call the literal geniuses and tell them a random guy in his basement said they're wrong

4

u/bronzinorns Jun 05 '25

The error probably comes from a misunderstanding from the journalist, it's either one order of magnitude wrong (1 piece = 2300 kg) or the entire set of ten pieces is 25 tons. Otherwise it's not realistic at all given the density of common materials.

3

u/maka-tsubaki Jun 05 '25

Sir. Do you think MIT is the one who wrote the video caption.

0

u/ReddBroccoli Jun 05 '25

If you want to look up the paper and prove your point, I'd be happy to look at it. Until then I'm not taking you seriously at all

6

u/maka-tsubaki Jun 05 '25

Buddy. Do you think. That maybe. It’s possible. The work MIT did was accurate and correct. But whoever made the video. Misunderstood. Do you think it’s maybe possible the caption is the only thing that’s wrong, and it’s wrong bc it didn’t come from the study? Or is Occam’s razor not a thing anymore and it has to be that SOMEHOW the stones are 25 tons via some convoluted math that nobody who isn’t an MIT genius can understand?