On Eve-o-matics

EVE is big. We rarely measure in meter, or centimeters for that matter. We talk in kilometers, or even astronomical units (AU). Even some of our wallets have quite a lot of zero’s in their balance. We have ship masses, but they go up in the billions. Did you know an average Erebus-class Titan is 2.379.370.000 kg? On an earthly scale that is roughly about as much as 3717 Antonov An-225’s, the largest airplane mankind has ever constructed. That’s one big mamma.

But let’s take a look at the smaller things. What about the weapons of EVE? The ever-popular Minmatar crafted 1400mm Howitzer Artillery cannon.

Now let’s take our average 1400mm artillery ammunition: one fine round of EMP L. The volume of a EMP L round is 0.025m³ We can assume the round of ammo is cylinder shaped, as most shells would be. You could imagine firing off a 1400mm gun would launch some big-ass shots. Rounds so massive they would leave bulletholes as big as a car. Right?

Nope. Think again. Having the two given facts; the diameter and the volume, we can measure how big a 1400mm EMP L shell could be. 1.4 meters (1400mm) gets you a surface, or circular base of 15.386 meters. Divided by the volume of 0.025 meters, that leaves you a height of … 0.01624 meter. So, you are practically shooting huge flying disks of 1.4 meters wide but merely 1.6 centimeters high. That’s somewhat disappointing.

Fun fact:

To put in perspective how big a 1400mm Howitzer would be in real life; this picture below is a 910mm mortar (nicked, Little David, 1945). You can imagine a 1400mm cannon could be firing Volkswagens.

Too bad in New Eden we are stuck with 0.025m³ flying disks.

Wow that’s a lot of math. Time to chill out, grab a Quafe and maybe call some Exotic Cows. Yeah. Exotic Dancers (both male and female, mind you) apparently have a volume of 1m³. Maybe they are packing a lot of accessories? But the average volume of a human body is merely 0.08m³. Speaking of big mamma’s. I think I’ll stick to my Quafe from now on. Oh, by the way, an unit of Quafe is 500 kg. Would you like a refill?

But there are other things, such as the ludicrous high speeds we have in EVE. A nano Cynabal can easily go as fast as 10 times the speed of sound! In fact, a Battleship with an Afterburner is enough to break the barrier. And that gives rather unrealistic scenarios. Imagine you are burning towards a Station to dock, you’d already be docked before Aura finishes “Docking permission requested.” By the time she says “Docking permission requested” you’d be undocked again already.

Thankfully we can’t fly (or dock) with the speed of light in sub-warp. That would be a bit tricky too, going at speed of light. I believe no Interceptor will get 299.792.458 m/s in subwarp ... But still, a respectable 6 km/s Inty is not too bad. You could a circle around the Earth in merely 111 minutes, or just under 2 hours. In for a trip to the Moon? You can make it within 18 hours. The first moon landing 1969 took a couple of days to get there.

Also here is an interesting puzzle for you guys at the captains quarters. Laser crystals!

All laser crystals has a volume of 1m³. If we may believe the in-game graphical icon, we can assume these are sphere shaped. Calculating the volume of a sphere is a bit tricky. The formula would be V = ⁴⁄₃ x π x r³. The thing is that we already know what V (the volume is). So we need to reverse the formula. Can you figure out what the diameter of a laser crystal would be with the volume of 1m³?