Let’s do the math! If you assume there are 300 kernels, the popcorn will be finished within two minutes, and all kernels popping within 100 ms of each other is sufficient for a big bada boom…
There are 2×60×10 epochs where the bang could occur. Each of the 300 kernels needs to pop in the same epoch, so 1/(2×60×10) is the probability of the second kernel popping in the same epoch as the first kernel. The probability of all 299 popping in the same epoch as the first kernel is (1/(2×60×10))^299 = (2×60×10)^(-299).
Crunching the numbers in the Google search calculator… the probability is zero. That was anticlimactic.
The exact probability is something more like 210^-921. Given that it would take around 9 gogol (910^926) years of constantly popping popcorns until that happens. Should we try?
Except Kerbal popping is rate limited by energy input, there’s not an instant of energy flow, there’s 150 seconds of energy input, each second increasing the energy, popped kernals absorb less energy allowing the unpopped ones to absorb the incoming energy to each the same state.
If you wanted them to all pop at once you’d need to put that amount of energy in all at once. Not impossible, but not going to happen with your home microwave oven
I can’t imagine it would be equally distributed? Probably normal distribution applies over the span, most of the kernels would probably pop within say 20s of each other, and none in the beginning.
That math assumes a flat distribution of popping times, which I suspect is incorrect.
Listening to a bag of microwave popcorn, it starts off slow, gets more rapid, and then tapers off again, implying that kernels are more likely to pop near the average time, which makes it somewhat more likely for two kernels to pop simultaneously.
But yeah, whole bag at once is probably still basically zero. Unless you use one of these, of course.
Since they’re all so far away and so many different distances away, it would imply something very very very large and very very very fast passed between us and the closest stars. Probably aliens. That would be cool
I could absolutely understand the difficulty of a non native English speaker in understanding the extreme amount of implication and nuance that book requires.
Using simpler words does not mean a smoother conveyance of information.
Those episodes were so good. I was at my gfs place and made her watch it. When he got to reading the manual pointing out prewash, she shouted “oh my god” paused the video, went into the kitchen. “Oooh”. Hers did indeed have that :D It’s not easy to find powder around there either so she’s taken to mortaring tablets and using a bit of that.
That’s basically how Chinese popcorn is made. They use a pressure vessel to heat up the kernels the releases the pressure and it explosively turns into popcorn.
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