What units should we use for the formula?
I'm going with weeks for age, teaspoons for size, acres for area, and leagues for depth.
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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Some people will do anything except use SI units
The units don't really matter as long as you're okay with your number of kids coming out with units of square root time over length(?)
Three 64 year old kids hunting a single 0.5m³ egg over a 12-by-8 metre garden
Where did you get a dinosaur, or dragon egg?
Well I imagine that they were playing Jumanji, lost a go, and have now been trapped in the game for decades on a single finite square bound infinitely in all directions, searching for the one Parasaurolophus egg to free one of them from the game.
The first part of the equation seems to make sense, the number of eggs does depend on the number of children, age of the children, and size of the eggs. Makes sense that each of the kids gets two eggs. Not sure why it's the square root of y, but okay.
The (a+d) part i just don't understand at all. Why are the physical properties of the garden relevant?
And yeah, as the other commenter pointed out, i wonder what units they're even using for some of this data
Area would help account for a really large yard, where you may want more eggs, or for a small one, where this calculation simply has too many eggs. So, egg density per square foot (or whatever unit they wanted).
Undergrowth size to me seems like its accounting for how many eggs simply aren't found. If the grass is 6" long, you'll want more eggs because they'll not all be found.
This seems to fit especially because they're added together, which means even a yard that was just dirt, no undergrowth, you'd get eggs from area alone. There's a floor on it. If it were a separate multiple then no grass would mean no eggs.
Most of those seem like nonlinear relationships, so it still doesn't make any sense still. The undergrowth would only start becoming an issue when the height gets taller than the egg diameter.
I agree, but that seems like about the level of detail a formula with no units would have.
If we hold the hunt in a single tall blade of grass we'll need to fit a lot of eggs in there.
Without units that's not really clear, could be depth in km
4 four year olds doing an egg hunt of egg-sized eggs in a garden of area 10m sq with no undergrowth means we need 160 eggs
(a+d)
a=area of garden
d= depth of undergrowth
Adding an area and a distance? Seems wonky.
It’s an empirical formula. Engineers don’t care about unit consistency as long as it works.
You need an area modifier for normally thin undergrowth clamped to a base, where multiplying would be too powerful. So you add as a general bonus to the area
I thought we were using potatoes so we didn't have to waste eggs!
Make the eggs bigger