A. A HOUSE IN A very rainy place, like the Alaska panhandle, might receive close to 4 meters of rain per year. Water turbines can be pretty efficient. If the house has a footprint of 1500 square feet and gutters 5 meters off the ground, it would generate an average of less than a watt of power from rainfall, and the maximum electricity savings would be:
A．在像阿拉斯加东南部那样多雨的地方，年平均降水量接近4米。水力发电机效率很高，如果占地140平方米的房子在离地5米的地方开槽收集雨水，那么平均下来发出的电力还不到1瓦，由此节省下来的钱最多只有：1500平方英尺×4米/年×1千克/立方米×9.81米/秒3×5米×15美分/千瓦时＝1.14美元/年
The rainiest hour on record as of 2014 occurred in 1947 in Holt, Missouri, where about 30 centimeters of rain fell in 42 minutes. For those 42 minutes, our hypothetical house could generate up to 800 watts of electricity, which might be enough to power everything inside it. For the rest of the year, it wouldn 8217;t come close.
截至2014年，有记录的最大降雨量发生在1947年，美国密苏里州的霍尔特在42分钟内降雨量高达30厘米。在这42分钟里，我们假想屋子里的发电机理论上能够发出800瓦的电力，也许能够驱动屋子里的所有东西。那其他时候呢？差远了。
If the generator rig cost $100, residents of the rainiest place in the US-Ketchikan, Alaska-could potentially offset the cost in under a century.
如果一个发电机价值100美金，那么住在美国最多雨的地方（阿拉斯加凯奇坎）的人们或许能在一个世纪内赚回这些钱。
Q. Using only pronounceable letter combinations, how long would names have to be to give each star in the universe a unique one-word name?
Q．如果只用可以读得出来的字母组合，给宇宙中每颗星星都用一个单词起一个独一无二的名字，那么这名字会有多长？
-Seamus Johnson
——谢默斯•约翰逊
A. THERE ARE ABOUT 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe. If you make a word pronounceable by alternating vowels and consonants (there are better ways to make pronounceable words, but this will do for an approximation), then every pair of letters you add lets you name 105 times as many stars (21 consonants times 5 vowels). Since numbers have a similar information density
A．宇宙里大约有300000000000000000000000颗行星。如果你通过交替使用元音和辅音的方法（当然有更好的制造可读单词的办法，但是这样就够了）拼出一个可读的单词，那么每增加一对元音辅音字母就能使你能命名的名字数量扩大105倍（21辅音×5元音）。而由于数字的信息密度与之相近
-100 possibilities per character
每一对数字就有100种可能
-this suggests the name will end up being about as long as the total number of stars:
这意味着名字的长度会和星星数量不相上下：
The stars are named Joe Biden.
我们用约瑟夫拜登给星星命名
I like doing math that involves measuring the lengths of numbers written out on the page (which is really just a way of loosely estimating log10x). It works, but it feels so wrong.
我做数学时喜欢那些需要数打印在纸上的数字有多长的题目（本质就是估算以10为底的对数的大小），这个方法确实可行，但总觉得怪怪的。