As a Thought Experiment many years ago, I considered the following problem...
Pour a glass of ice tea. Put in a spoon and give it a swirl...how far do the molecules travel in the aggregate?
So...to determine this, I have many times tried to figure it out in my head. I have always felt (for over 25 years) that the molecules of water given a spin in this way travel many LIGHT YEARS, and I've had a few fun conversations about it, but have never actually figured it out until now...
(The density of water is roughly 1 g/cm3 or about 500 billion billion billion hydrogen atoms per cubic meter)
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 is the number of water molecules in 1 cup of water (500 cups in a cubic meter)
the distance each travels is 100 inches (33 rotations of 3 inches average (who cares, but this is like an 8 inch by 2 inch cylindrical glass full of water spinning 33 times!))
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 inches is how many light years?!?!? (if any!)
light year in inches:
180,000 miles/sec x 5280 ft/mile x 12 inches/ft x 60 seconds/minute x 60 minutes/hour x 24 hours/day x 365 days per year =
359,661,772,800,000,000 inches per light year.
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 inches / 359,661,772,800,000,000 inches per light year = BEAUCOUP LIGHT YEARS
278,039,000,979.97848716604001569332 light years.
Call it an even 250,000,000,000 light years in each coffee cup baby! Or maybe a lot less if you don't rotate it so much!!!
So each rotation causes the aggregate distance traveled by the molecules to be 1,000,000,000 light years!
The point of this story - molecules are really really tiny!
LOL hope your brain is bending around this, it is much easier written down, and I really appreciate my 11th grade Chemistry instructor Mrs. Usher (whom I found out later was a lesbian (while I was on an acid trip at my high school graduation ceremony the year after I graduated, don't ask what I was doing there, but I didn't have anything to do with the bomb that blew up during the ceremony!!! But, that's another story!)) for teaching me all about how to keep track of the units one is manipulating formulas, it has served me well.
