Rounding
Rounding
[In the top left part of the panel is a small drawing where Cueball, wearing a bike helmet and holding a bike, is speaking to Megan.] Cueball: I can ride my bike at 45 MPH. Cueball: If you round.
[To their right is a large number with unit, with an arrow going straight down to a normal sized similar number. From there and proceeding all the way down to the bottom, in alternating leftward and rightward rows, the rest of the comic shows arrows connecting conversions from one measured unit into another unit. Straight arrows show the direction of the sequence on each line, the end of each line curveing down to start the next line in the opposite direction. The last of these lines ends close to the middle of the panel, with a straight arrow down to another large number with unit, like the first.] 17 MPH 8 meters/sec 16 knots 5 fathoms/sec 3 furlongs/min 6 fathoms/sec 40 KPH 22 knots 41 KPH 204 furlongs/hr 26 MPH 12 M/S 4 furlongs/min 15 yards/sec 8 fathoms/sec 15 M/S 34 MPH 5 furlongs/min 33 knots 19 yards/sec 10 fathoms/sec 36 knots 6 furlongs/min 45 MPH

This comic is about the follies of unit conversion. Normally, when you say you can ride a bike at 45 mph if you round, you mean that you can ride at a speed between 44.5 and 45.5, something most people are incapable of doing. [ citation needed ] The joke is that Cueball actually means if you go through a extremely long chain of rounding imprecisely (see below ), starting at 17 mph (which is equivalent to 27.4 km/h and not an improbable speed for an ordinary road-bike and a reasonably fit rider), you can get to the value of 45 (72.4 km/h).
Randall also esoterically uses some more historic units here: fathoms/sec, furlongs/min, and furlongs/hr. A fathom is a unit of length, in the modern era being equivalent to six feet, usually used to measure the depth of water. Fathoms/sec could potentially be used to measure the ascent/descent speed of a submersible, but it would normally be a strange choice to enumerate the speed of a bike. A furlong is also a unit of length, equivalent to one eighth of a mile (or 660 feet or 110 fathoms) but is mostly unused except in horse racing. It is possible that furlongs/min or furlongs/hour could be used to measure the speed of a horse. Knots (nautical miles per hour) are a standard unit of measuring speed, but are typically used for measuring speed for airplanes or ships, not speed on land. However, km/h (kilometers per hour, spelled kph in the comic) is commonly used internationally to state the speed of land vehicles, while m/s (meters per second) is a measurement encountered in scientific usage.
The title text furthers the joke by taking the imprecise rounding literally, implying that this increase could actually be used/abused as a novel form of propulsion, but it isn't clarified for what type of vehicle. It could be an engine for ground or air travel, but contains the implication that it is trying to 'trick physics' similar to the theoretical 'warp drive' conceived to propel interstellar spacecraft at otherwise impossible speeds. One interpretation of the supposed chain of conversions is that it has somehow created a great deal of energy from nothing. Suppose there existed a device or system that could magically accelerate an object from 17 mph to 45 mph without any energy input. The sped-up object could be harnessed to a generator or engine in such a way that the object was slowed back down to 17 mph, with the difference in energy being output in a useful way, and the object fed back into the device. The result would be an engine that could create both free energy and non-conserved changes in momentum.
At the demonstrated rate of about 4% medium rounding gain, it would just take 73 more steps of rounding-acceleration to reach supersonic speed from the starting speed of 45 mph. If the speed of light could be approached without relativistic effects, another 349 steps would go from supersonic speed to the speed of light. (More efficient approaches may exist.)
[In the top left part of the panel is a small drawing where Cueball, wearing a bike helmet and holding a bike, is speaking to Megan.] Cueball: I can ride my bike at 45 MPH. Cueball: If you round.
[To their right is a large number with unit, with an arrow going straight down to a normal sized similar number. From there and proceeding all the way down to the bottom, in alternating leftward and rightward rows, the rest of the comic shows arrows connecting conversions from one measured unit into another unit. Straight arrows show the direction of the sequence on each line, the end of each line curveing down to start the next line in the opposite direction. The last of these lines ends close to the middle of the panel, with a straight arrow down to another large number with unit, like the first.] 17 MPH 8 meters/sec 16 knots 5 fathoms/sec 3 furlongs/min 6 fathoms/sec 40 KPH 22 knots 41 KPH 204 furlongs/hr 26 MPH 12 M/S 4 furlongs/min 15 yards/sec 8 fathoms/sec 15 M/S 34 MPH 5 furlongs/min 33 knots 19 yards/sec 10 fathoms/sec 36 knots 6 furlongs/min 45 MPH
