On 20-2-2009 17:50, Invisible wrote:
>>> Even so, 10x higher still seems rather large. I would have expected 
>>> something more like a few percent denser.
>>
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro%27s_number
> 
> There are 6.03 x 10^23 atoms in 12 grams of Carbon-12.
> 
> [A fact which our Java lecturer disputed. He was trying to claim that 
> the range of a single-precision float is "oh, more than the number of 
> atoms in the universe", and thus you don't really need double-precision.]

One of the reasons why I am happy that I did not know of CS when I 
started at uni. They started a year before and somehow that message did 
not reach me in time, otherwise I might have studied CS. While studying 
physics I did a few courses at the CS department and was invariably 
struck by the quality of the lecturers. Did I tell the story of the 
teacher that could not write down the equation for a straight line?

> I'm not quite sure how that's relevant here though.

The number of atoms in a given volume of gas at standard pressure is 
constant, hence the weight of a volume of N2 is 7 times that of H2 and 
O2 8 times. So why did you expect a few percent?

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