Can a badger kill you? Is London Bridge bigger than a blue whale? Leo C., age 9, Rosen Class, Hilcroft School.

8/22/2015

Ivan

8/26/2015 06:18:48 am

Hi Leo,

Well, two very interesting and different questions!
Let's look at the badger question first.

Can a badger kill you?

It is extremely unlikely, and no-one has been killed by one yet. Of course a badger is a carnivorous (meat eating) wild animal. So when it is hungry or angry it can attack other animals. However badgers tend to attack very small animals and even if they did chase you they are not great at hunting as they are quite slow.

Badgers are very shy and would probably prefer to keep out of your way, so best to leave them alone anyway and definitely not pick a fight with one!

Ivan

Ivan

9/15/2015 10:21:10 am

Part 2!

Is London Bridge bigger than a blue whale?

The quick answer is yes. It is, indeed much bigger than a blue whale. How can we be sure? It’s extremely unlikely a blue whale would ever swim up the Thames River and under London Bridge so we may never be able to see them next to each other, so to work this out we need a different approach.

Sometimes other smaller whales DO swim under London Bridge however. Read more about the sad story of a smaller whale which did that here: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus/blogs/whats-new/2011/01/28/having-a-whale-of-a-time-at-tring-museum

Anyway back to the question. Firstly, Tower Bridge is often referred to as London Bridge, so we’ll do our calculations on that one. There are lots of bridges in London, and there is one officially called London Bridge though it is less dramatic.

So let’s start with the whale. The blue whale is the largest animal on the planet. It can weigh up to 180 tons and be 30 metres long. Is London Bridge bigger? Well let’s look at the different ways you can measure 'big'.

Round 1

The weight of something is how heavy it is (or to be precise, how strong gravity is acting).

Tower bridge: 70,000 tons of concrete (includes the bits you can’t see, supporting the bridge from within the river), and 11,000 tons of steel.

Bridge: at least 80,000 tons
Whale: 180 tons

Weight of bridge > Weight of whale

Whale 0 Bridge 1

Round 2

The volume of something is how much space it takes up. We can work this out if we know the density of something (how much space a certain weight of something fills) and the weight. You could also work this out if you knew the exact shape (but we don’t).

Density of steel 8,000 kg/m3 (a cube of steel 1m along each side weighs 8000 kg)

Density of concrete 2,300 kg/m3

So 70,000 tons of concrete is roughly 70,000,000 kilograms (kg) and 11,000 tons of steel is 11,000,000 kg.

So the volume of the concrete is:
70,000,000 / 2300 = 30,434 m3
+ the steel:
11,000,000 / 8000 = 1375 m3

Total volume of bridge = 31809 m3

We can’t work out the whale volume exactly but a sensible guess is perhaps 150m3.

So the bridge takes up a LOT more volume than a whale.

Volume of bridge > Volume of whale

Whale 0 Bridge 2

Round 3

The length of something just measures size in one direction.

Length of London bridge = 244m
Length of whale = 30

Another easy win for the bridge!

Length of bridge > Length of whale

Whale 0 Bridge 3

So it looks like the bridge wins hands down. No contest. Though of course there are lots of other smaller bridges that would be smaller than a blue whale…

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