One surreal graph

[redbird]

My employer has what we cheerfully refer to as the "science art library," meaning illustrations that they've had drawn for some past science book and can reuse: a trilobite, a triple beam balance, some graduated cylinders and thermometers, food chains, and an assortment of graph: a circle graph of where the planet's fresh water is, curves showing radioactive decay, some notional illustrations of things like ages of pine trees in different forests or the death rate of fish in a pond that is being over-fertilized. I was looking for a graph to use today for a practice question, where the point was graph reading rather than the specific content. Skimming through the library, I came across a line graph. Neat, boring, straight line rising from lower left to upper right, no units or other numbers.

The x axis is labeled "latitude."

The y axis is labeled "rabbits per liter."

My coworker and I were unable to come up with any explanation for what this might mean, or where it came from.

Comments

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's so much more sensible than my speculation! When I clicked on "comments," I was all set to go on about what units of measure imply about measurement techniques. Before modern scanning techniques, it was not feasible to measure the volume of an individual living baby rabbit with any accuracy. Too quick. Too irregular. Too squirmy. (Even with kittens, they generally just weigh them, and that's a fast measurement where fur does not cause much error.) So the standard measurement technique used to be how many rabbits fit in a standard size container. I supposed it had been updated from rabbits/cubic foot to rabbits/liter.

I'd expect bigger rabbits at lower lattitudes. I don't know if the research found something I did not expect, or if the graph refers to conditions in the Southern Hemisphere, or something entirely different.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that never occurred to me either. I was just thinking of some kind of study measuring the crowding of rabbits into habitat, but I suppose it would make more sense to measure them by surface area rather than by volume.

Litter. Probably. How relatively boring.

[webbob.livejournal.com]

Measuring the surface areas of individual rabbits would appear to be... challenging.

[michiexile]

Well .... since we can assume a rabbit to be essentially simply connected and compact, we could just use the generalized Stokes theorem and measure the surface area by measuring the total volume of flux through the rabbit.

Once we get some sort of stream passing through all the rabbit's surface area at once, that is. Might be an invasive procedure.

[webbob.livejournal.com]

The slope of the graph in question is equal to the Ideal Rabbit Constant and the graph presumes Standard Temperature and Pressure.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Consider a Spherical Rabbit....

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

And it's rabbits all the way up!

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

Actually, warm-blooded animals that vary in size tend to be larger near the poles and smaller near the equator (it's to do with regulating body temperature I think). The most impressive example I know of is the platypus. (http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/BHAN-53573T?open)

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

Oh for heavens sake, it's the same as measuring the volume of any irregular solid. Start with a large measuring container, place the rabbit in the container, then pour liquid on it until you have submerged the rabbit and have a level surface on the liquid (often it's easiest to stop at a round number, eg 4 litres). Remove the rabbit and note the drop in volume. The difference gives you your answer:

V(Rabbit + liquid) - V(liquid)L = V(rabbit)L

You might want to do it quickly, though, or your rabbit will not be very happy.

Areas of probable error are V(liquid absorbed by rabbit's fur and lost when removing rabbit), V(liquid inhaled by rabbit) and V(liquid splashed as rabbit madly attempts to exit vessel). Repeated measurings, while useful to determine average measurements and get an idea of amounts lost, will probably result in a very annoyed rabbit.

HTH HAND.

[redbird]

It might be prudent to anesthetize the rabbit.

[moxie_man]

redbird, please take the above slightly tongue-in-cheek and refer to an old website about the The Sekrit War between humans (and some squirrel allies) and the evil bunnies. }:3

[(Anonymous)]

It is ALWAYS prudent to anesthetize da wabbit!

-AWF