Sunday 21 September 2014

How long is a packet of Spaghetti?

A couple of days ago, possibly as a result of cooking a packet of SuperNoodles, a question popped up in NSB's head :

How long is a packet of Spaghetti?

This is to say, if you put all the uncooked strands end to end, how long a line of would they make? Intrigued, NSB bought a packet of SmartPrice spaghetti and had a bash at finding out the answer to this question.

A packet of Spaghetti

As can be seen, there is some variability in the lengths of the strands, so to get an average length, NSB took 20 stands and measured their lengths with this rather groovy ruler :

A Green's Mill Ruler - accept no substitute

The lengths varied from 245mm to 263mm, with the mean being 256mm.

NSB was also interested in the width of the strands. This was measured by placing 100 strands next to each other, measuring their collective width and then working out the width of one strand - 1.75mm.

Soooo, we know the length of one average strand, but how many are their in a packet? Turns out that it only takes a few minutes to count them and, in this packet, there were 581 strands.

581 strands

Which suggests that a Packet of Spaghetti is 148.6 metres long

Alternatively, it could be used to cover a floor area of 51cm x 51cm (0.26m2)

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