Effects of High Altitude
Effects of High Altitude
Effects of High Altitude How life is different at one mile above sea level (e.g. in Denver)
[Eight small panels, each containing an image with a caption at the top:]
[A pot on a stovetop, with steam rising from the pot] Water boils at 202°F
[A baseball flying through the air] Baseballs and golf balls fly 5-10% farther
[Five wavy arrows hitting a curved surface, two at a low point and three at a high point] Sunburns develop significantly faster
[Scrabble tiles for letters Q, X and Y with point values 12, 9 and 5, respectively] Scrabble letters are worth 16% more
[Cueball looking down at a broken hand mirror on the floor] Breaking a mirror only causes 5½ years of bad luck
[Cueball and Megan are talking. Megan is gesturing] 40 is the new 28 Megan: 50 is the new 40, and when you account for elevation it's more like 37.
[Five black balloons floating] Nuclear war can be started with only 94 red balloons.
[Cueball and Ponytail are talking. Ponytail is looking at her phone] People make marijuana jokes slightly earlier Cueball: Hey, what time is it? Ponytail: 4:17 Blaze it!

This comic starts out with three effects of high altitude related to the air getting "thinner" and the lower air pressure. Denver is one mile (5280 feet or 1609 meters) above sea-level (as marked on the steps of the State Capitol). At this elevation, the average atmospheric pressure is about 83% of sea level pressure, or about 840 mbar instead of 1013 mbar, and gravity is 99.94% of gravity at sea level at the same latitude, or 9.796 m/s 2 instead of 9.801 m/s 2 . This has a number of effects:
As usual for xkcd, the effects of high altitude are extended in a comically absurd manner, applying this "slightly less" rule to things that have nothing to do with altitude:
This point increase would have little impact in the board game when two players sit across each other. However, it would imply that scrabble played via internet should require players to state their altitude at the beginning of the online game which then assigns advantages to higher-altitude players. This advantage seems arbitrary, unless the altitude difference is really significant enough to impede the thinking ability of the higher-altitude party.
In the title text, One Hundred and One Dalmatians is a Disney franchise (based on a children's book), where the villain, Cruella de Vil , aims to capture and kill 99 Dalmatian puppies (97 in the book) to have the perfect spotted fur coat. (The title includes the parents [book: and other Dalmatian caregivers] of the Dalmatian puppies.) The comic claims that, at a higher altitude in Flagstaff (6903 ft / 2104 m), she would only have needed 89 Dalmatians, possibly implying that puppies at higher altitudes are bigger (perhaps because there is less air pressure to compress them ) or that Cruella de Vil at high altitudes is smaller (possibly because of the higher humidity and lower temperature ).
Effects of High Altitude How life is different at one mile above sea level (e.g. in Denver)
[Eight small panels, each containing an image with a caption at the top:]
[A pot on a stovetop, with steam rising from the pot] Water boils at 202°F
[A baseball flying through the air] Baseballs and golf balls fly 5-10% farther
[Five wavy arrows hitting a curved surface, two at a low point and three at a high point] Sunburns develop significantly faster
[Scrabble tiles for letters Q, X and Y with point values 12, 9 and 5, respectively] Scrabble letters are worth 16% more
[Cueball looking down at a broken hand mirror on the floor] Breaking a mirror only causes 5½ years of bad luck
[Cueball and Megan are talking. Megan is gesturing] 40 is the new 28 Megan: 50 is the new 40, and when you account for elevation it's more like 37.
[Five black balloons floating] Nuclear war can be started with only 94 red balloons.
[Cueball and Ponytail are talking. Ponytail is looking at her phone] People make marijuana jokes slightly earlier Cueball: Hey, what time is it? Ponytail: 4:17 Blaze it!
