On 2008.08.11 21:50:25 -0400, WJhonson(a)aol.com scribbled 0.5K characters:
In a message dated 8/11/2008 6:41:49 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com writes:
The boat is intended for students studying, so it's
natural that it would have a small library (8000 volumes sounds about
right).>>.
How do you get 8 thousands volumes onto a boat?
Can you calculate the amount of shelf space that would require?
Doesn't sound too hard. Assume volumes average an inch in width; bulky stuff like
dictionaries and big scholarly stuff being balanced by thin novels and monographs etc. So
8000 inches of shelf space. I think a reasonable shelf is 3 feet wide, or 36 inches. 8000
/ 36 is ~222 shelves. At 6 shelves a case, that means we need 37 shelves or so. I think
you could stuff 37 shelves into 3 or 4 rooms, and note that we could easily shrink our
space requirements here (I suspect my width average and shelf width may be overly
pessimistic).
--
gwern
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