The planet’s average temperature hit 17.23 degrees Celsius on Thursday, surpassing the 17.18C record set on Tuesday and equalled on Wednesday.
Reminds me of a story I read about how if you had a can of food and bacteria got into it, and every day the bacteria doubled in size, and somehow this bacteria had conversations with itself with all of the other bacterias in the can about how long the food would last.
How long would it be before everything ran out?
At some point, the smart bacteria would stand up and say, “Hey, my fellow Amoebas, we’ve used 1/4 of all of the food in the can! If we’re not careful and if we don’t manage our resources we will run out of food!”
And the politician bacteria would say, “Don’t worry, everyone, we have 3 times as much food as we’ve ever used in all the months of our existence still in the can!”
And the bacteria was fruitful, and multiplied.
And when they hit the halfway mark the next day, the smart bacteria would stand up and say, “Hey my fellow Amoebas, we’ve used half of all of the food in the can! If we’re not careful and if we don’t manage our resources we will run out of food!”
And the bacteria politicians would say, “Everyone! Don’t worry! We still have as much food left as we have used in our entire existence to this point!”
And the bacteria was fruitful, and multiplied.
And then another day passed, and all of the bacteria died.
There’s also a good example of exponential change described using a doubling drop of water in The Power of Compounding
Meh.
It’s doubling each step.
If course it’s at 1/(2^n) of the final volume at n steps before the final step.
- At half of its final volume one step before the end
- a quarter of its final volume two steps before the end
- an eighth of its final volume three steps before the end
- a sixteenth of it’s final volume four steps before the end
