A very geeky thought-experiment

Do you remember these fellas?

The Monkey Army

Well, back when they were being given away with boxes of PG Tips, the NBM some people seemed to think that five monkeys might be too many monkeys for one small flat. Discussions ensued; discussions along the lines of how many monkeys constituted too many monkeys; discussions where a proposed ‘NO MORE MONKEYS’ rule was debated. Anyhoo, suffice to say that the monkeys stayed, but their number was not added to.

But then, the other day, I read how many free monkey friends PG Tips gave away in total: it was 2.3 million. I’ll repeat that: TWO POINT THREE MILLION. Let’s all just take a moment to imagine 2.3 million monkeys, shall we?

........ it’s a beautiful thought, I know. But actually quite difficult to visualise.

This, for example, is only about 230 monkeys:

A fraction of 2.3 million (0.01%, to be precise).

2.3 million monkeys seemed like a fabulous, wonderful concept... but the concept was just not enough for me. There were two things that I really wanted to know, and those things were:

1. What would 2.3 million monkeys actually look like, in practical terms that I could understand?
   
2. What number of monkeys would officially be ‘too many’ monkeys for our small flat?

And that, kind reader, is how I came to find myself measuring a monkey, and working out its approximate volume, and then estimating the dimensions of our flat, and working out its approximate volume. And this is what I discovered...

If I took all the unnecessary things out of my flat – like all the furniture – and then packed little monkeys floor-to-ceiling, I’d get approximately 150,000 monkeys in there.

Artist's impression of 150,000 monkeys

So, even with the whole gaff bursting at the seams with monkeyage, It'd still only accommodate just 6.5% of 2.3 million. Thus, I’d need 15 or 16 of my flat if I wanted to house all the little monkeys. And I'd also need to sell all my furniture, obviously.

Now, for those of you who don’t know how big my flat is (which I’m guessing is all of you), I thought I’d do a quick conversion into more widely accessible terms….

… and the humble double-decker bus was my volumetric object of choice. And wouldn’t you just know it? It turns out that an average one of these has roughly the same volume as my flat! So, you’d need a fleet of 15 or 16 of these babies (with their seats and stairs and things removed) to store your collection of 2.3 million monkeys.

And do you know what? Even I had to agree that that, my friends, would probably constitute ‘too many’ monkeys.

And on that bombshell, this geek is signing off for today :o)