Hacker News Reader

I wonder if someone made a mistake with unit conversions... The next paragraph says:

> The results: over half of the eggs broke when dropped vertically from an 8-millimeter (31-inch) height

31 inches is 0.8m, not 8mm. Maybe they meant to say 0.8, 0.9, 1.0 meters? Strange.

Yet the image ("Experimental snapshots for vertical (top) and horizontal (bottom) egg drops.") definitely appears to show something closer to 8mm, assuming the black area is the table.

Edit: Reading the paper [1] it's definitely 8mm. The ArsTechnica writer screwed up the conversion to inches. Should be 0.31".

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-025-02087-0

Reply on news.ycombinator.com