musing on homeopathy
So, mimsy & I were off buying our breakfast bars, and the vitamin store also sells homeopathy supplies & remedies. Many of them are marketed as 30 dilutions (1 cc into 100cc = 1 dilution aka "C").
And so I, like many geeks would do, wondered how much water I would need to perform 30 dilutions for 1 drop.
Hmm, 1 drop = 1cc. 1 dilution becomes 100cc (soda can), 2 becomes 10,000 cc (10 liters aka quarter tank of gas), 3 becomes 1 cu m. 8 becomes 10 cu km. uh-oh. volume of earth... 10^12 cu km. ok, 1 drop becomes the earth at 13.5 dilutions... 100 billion stars in the galaxy... 18 dilutions... 10^22 stars in the universe... 24.5 dilutions at 1 earth-volume of water per star in the entire universe...
wow. what's these guys water bill?
ok, new analogy... world GDP = 74 Trillion = 10^16. 1 penny out of that is 9 C. ok, every star has an earth... 14c for the galaxy, 20C for the universe... 1 penny out of the universes GDP is 20C dilution...
They sell 200C dilutions of a flu medicine... 1 atom in the universe is only 40C. If Men In Black was right, and every atom in the universe contains it's own universe, then one atom in one of those universes would only be 80C.
OK, fun's over... That's just crazy-talk now.