this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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xkcd

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Title text: The Atlantic is expanding at about 10 ppm (points per month).


Transcript: xkcd comics picture[A depiction primarily of the Atlantic Ocean and the surrounding landmasses. The land is black, leaving the oceans and seas white except for the following words written in sixteen lines of text (from just below the tip of Greenland/Arctic Ocean down to slightly above the Falkland Islands/Southern Ocean) that are, for the most part, wrapped between the Atlantic coastline 'margins' (as defined by the Americas on the left and Europe/Africa on the right, or significant island groups:]

If you
covered
the surface of
the Atlantic Ocean
with twelve-point
printed text,
with the lines
wrapping at
the coasts, the
expansion of
the ocean basin
due to plate
tectonics would
increase your word
count by about 100
words per second.

[Caption below the panel:]
My Hobby: Geohydrotypography


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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Two questions.

  1. How many total 12 points words is the surface of the Atlantic?

  2. How many words a second are we gaining due to rising sea levels?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also what size font is depicted to scale here?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

2 Ir, where the 1 Ir unit is the diameter of Ireland.