TSP vs TBSP
TSP vs TBSP
Cooking tips: tsp vs tbsp [left column:] Tsp Teraspoon 1,000,000,000,000 (10 12 ) spoons
[right column:] Tbsp Binary tsp 1,099,511,627,776 (1024 4 ) spoons

This is another one of Randall's Tips , this time a Cooking Tip.
This comic plays a joke on the common liquid measurements of teaspoons (tsp) and tablespoons (tbsp), which are commonly confused. In the US, a teaspoon is defined as 4.9 ml (0.18 imp fl oz; 0.17 US fl oz) while a tablespoon is defined as 14.8 ml (0.50 US fl oz; 3 tsp).
It also plays a joke on metric prefixes (based on powers of 10) versus binary prefixes (based on powers of 2), which are also a common source of confusion (see also 394: Kilobyte ). In the International System of Units (SI), T (for tera- ) signifies a multiplier of 10 12 (that is, 1 000 000 000 000), while Ti ( tebi- , for terabinary ), and not Tb, is an ISO standard binary prefix meaning 2 40 (that is, 1024 4 = 1 099 511 627 776).
If "spoon" is understood as US teaspoon, then one teraspoon will be 4 928 922 cubic meters (1.302 billion US gallons or 3996 acre-feet) and a binary teraspoon will be 5 419 407 cubic meters (1.432 B gal or 4394 acre-ft). If the US tablespoon is taken as base unit, a teraspoon will be 14 786 765 cubic meters and a binary teraspoon 16 258 220 cubic meters – roughly equivalent to six thousand Olympic-size swimming pools or slightly more than six times the volume of the Pyramid of Giza. All these units have fairly limited uses in cooking. [ citation needed ]
The title text is a play on a lyric from the Alanis Morissette song " Ironic ": "It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife." Randall changes the line to "teraspoon" and "kilonife". The "kilonife" comes from knife being interpreted as "nife" with a k prefix – k being the SI symbol for kilo- –, in a similar vein as taking tsp for "teraspoon". "Nife" is a geophysical name for Earth's core, thought to be composed of nickel and iron, and hence the word comes from the chemical symbols Ni (nickel) and Fe (iron).
Cooking tips: tsp vs tbsp [left column:] Tsp Teraspoon 1,000,000,000,000 (10 12 ) spoons
[right column:] Tbsp Binary tsp 1,099,511,627,776 (1024 4 ) spoons
