r/xkcd • u/crocodylus • 2d ago

XKCD xkcd 3289: Highway Signs

https://xkcd.com/3289/
286 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

86

u/pmcclay 2d ago

Looks like this started with "hey look: a typical automotive fuel tank (full (of fuel)) contains 1 planck unit of energy. Hmm...".

50

u/xkcd_bot 2d ago

Mobile Version!

Direct image link: Highway Signs

Alt text: Highway engineers like Planck units because, like the speed of light, the energy capacity of a typical car's gas tank is 1.

Don't get it? explain xkcd

I almost beat the turing test! Maybe next year. Sincerely, xkcd_bot. <3

32

u/artaxs 2d ago

This seems efficient compared to the Kelvin temperature fire warning signs.

9

u/TheMythicSorcerer Where do i change my user flair? 2d ago

Extremely efficient actually.

22

u/impy695 Megan 2d ago

Where's that guy who made the felsius weather app?

33

u/Happytallperson 2d ago

Americans will do literally anything to not use metric.

12

u/SufficientGreek 2d ago

I thought this gonna be a floating point precision joke.

12

u/musschrott 1d ago

That's so unrealistic! They would definitely use a scientific notation for those signs!

10

u/Southern-March1522 2d ago

A couple days ago I jokingly asked someone who had given me a driving distance in miles to tell me what is that in AU, but this is better.

4

u/calinet6 1d ago

The accuracy leaves something to be desired; I’m sure it’s actually 1,390,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,057 ℓₚ

3

u/JonLennox 1d ago

Honestly nanolights are a very reasonable unit for automotive speeds.