Słoń w basenie

Zadałem pytanie sztucznej inteligencji How many elephants one could fit into an Olympic swimming pool? (Ile słoni zmieści się w basenie olimpijskim?)

Oto otrzymana odpowiedź. Zwracam uwagę, że AI starała się być dosyć dowcipna…

To figure this out, we have to do a bit of “ballpark math.” Since neither elephants nor swimming pools are perfectly rectangular, we’ll use averages to get a realistic estimate.

1. The Volume of the Pool

An Olympic-sized swimming pool is standard in its dimensions:

• Dimensions: 50m long, 25m wide, and usually 2m deep.
• Total Volume: $50 \times 25 \times 2 = 2,500$ cubic meters ($m^3$).

2. The Volume of an Elephant

Let’s use an adult African bush elephant as our unit of measurement.

• Weight: Roughly 6,000 kg.
• Density: Since elephants can float/swim, their density is roughly equal to water ($1,000 \text{ kg/m}^3$).
• Estimated Volume: About $6 m^3$ per elephant.

3. The Big Squeeze

If we treat the elephants like a liquid (purely theoretical, of course—no elephants were harmed in this calculation), we simply divide the pool volume by the elephant volume:

$$\frac{2,500 m^3}{6 m^3} \approx 416 \text{ elephants}$$

Realistic Considerations

In the real world, you can’t “pour” elephants into a pool. Because of their irregular shapes and the air gaps between them:

• The Packing Factor: You’d likely lose about 20–30% of that space to trunk-wiggling room and gaps between legs.
• Practical Total: You could likely fit about 300 to 325 elephants if you stacked them very carefully (and very vertically).

Fun Fact: If you actually put 400 elephants in a full pool, you would have a massive displacement problem. The “splash” would essentially empty the pool instantly!