How Many Elephants?

Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago

tagawa

34 points

19 comments

howmanyelephants.co.ukOtherstory

calmpositive

Debate

20/100

Unit ConversionCreativityMeasurement

Key topics

Unit Conversion

Creativity

Measurement

The website 'How many elephants?' is a humorous unit conversion tool that sparks interesting discussions about measurement and creativity, with users exploring its quirks and limitations.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Active discussion

First comment

Peak period

84-96h

Avg / period

6.3

Comment distribution19 data points

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Based on 19 loaded comments

Key moments

01Story posted
Sep 25, 2025 at 8:00 AM EDT
3 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Sep 28, 2025 at 6:08 PM EDT
3d after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
12 comments in 84-96h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Sep 29, 2025 at 5:34 PM EDT
3 months ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (19 comments)

Showing 19 comments

eightnoteight

3 months ago

1 reply

first i thought the website would say how many elephants left in the world (like white rhinos)

hermitcrab

3 months ago

It does now.

signorovitch

3 months ago

2 replies

I thought at first it would represent everything in elephants; elephant volumes, elephant hides, elephant-years &c.

baubino

3 months ago

1 reply

Me too. That was the reason I clicked. Now I’m disappointed to not know how many elephants.

hermitcrab

3 months ago

I have added a note at the bottom of the page.

hermitcrab

3 months ago

1 reply

Author here. I did consider doing that. But ended up using elephants for height and mass. I didn't think the volume or area of an elephant was a very useful comparison!

hermitcrab

3 months ago

But I have added elephant comparisons for speed (charging), time (average lifespan) and energy (food consumption).

dahart

3 months ago

1 reply

I entered 4e10 for Energy | Kilocalories, and got:

=> 0.914x the recommended daily food consumption for a male human adult (1.09x smaller)

Is this a bug, or am I not eating nearly enough?? ;)

zamadatix

3 months ago

1 reply

It looks like they defined that stat internally as "1.046e7", which would be a reasonable number assuming Joules. Elsewhere it defines Kilocalories as "0.000239006"... but I'm guessing they meant it the other way around (i.e. "4184" not "1/4184") based on how they use the data in the functions.

Sure enough, if you do 4e10/4184^2 you get right on target. I think other things in the energy category may have the same "wrong conversion direction" bug as well.

hermitcrab

3 months ago

1 reply

Oops. The energy values were indeed inverted. Now fixed. Thanks.

Also fixed a few other rogue values. We had the mass of a great white shark as 8.9e20 Kg, rather than 8.9e2 Kg. That would be quite some shark.

feoren

3 months ago

> We had the mass of a great white shark as 8.9e20 Kg, rather than 8.9e2 Kg

We're going to need a bigger boat.

derscodes

3 months ago

1 reply

Should not 1440 minutes just be a day not 12 movies lol.

hermitcrab

3 months ago

1 reply

There are plenty of other ways to translate between standard units (e.g. minutes -> days).

derscodes

3 months ago

1 reply

oh I get you, that's not the purpose of this, it's for non standard. Makes sense.

hermitcrab

3 months ago

It is for helping people visualize/comprehend what 12,345 meters or 12,345 tons means.

anArbitraryOne

3 months ago

1 reply

1 Electron volts = 29.8 x the energy released Tsar bomba 69.5 x the energy released by convert 1 Kg of mass to energy. Something is way off, and it's not just the singular/plural of "volt"

hermitcrab

3 months ago

Yes, the x -> Joule values were inverted. <blush> . Now fixed.

Amorymeltzer

3 months ago

>the height of a Greg Davies

I think (little) Alex Horne made this

floam

3 months ago

I was surprised it didn’t have a good 1:1 for certain units.

Like a meter, is really easily imagined as the height of a doorknob on a door.

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