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posted by [personal profile] ptc24 at 08:29pm on 17/10/2010
No, not alternate realities, actual dimensions of things. A 2x4 is useful for hitting people with, and of course everyone should know the significance of 1x4x9. But surely there are others that I can't think of...

ETA: OK, there are lots of things which are kind of one dimensional. But how about things which are 2D or 3D like the examples above (or tim's example)?
There are 13 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
tim: Tim with short hair, smiling, wearing a black jacket over a white T-shirt (Default)
posted by [personal profile] tim at 07:33pm on 17/10/2010
8x11 glossies?
tim: Tim with short hair, smiling, wearing a black jacket over a white T-shirt (Default)
posted by [personal profile] tim at 12:54am on 19/10/2010
I guess it's actually 8x10.
pseudomonas: "pseudomonas" in London Underground roundel (Default)
posted by [personal profile] pseudomonas at 07:59pm on 17/10/2010
4x4?
ptc24: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] ptc24 at 08:01pm on 17/10/2010
Hmmm, those aren't dimensions as such (certainly not in the four wheel drive case, I don't know of others).
jack: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] jack at 01:53pm on 18/10/2010
Hm, how about 5x5? :)
ewx: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] ewx at 08:14pm on 17/10/2010
6 foot. (As in, under.)
ewx: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] ewx at 08:18pm on 17/10/2010
45 (rpm record; in particular, as in brimful of Asha on the).
ewx: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] ewx at 08:21pm on 17/10/2010
The 6 yard and 18 yard boxes on a football pitch.
naath: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] naath at 09:57pm on 17/10/2010
The B5 credits sometimes (always? I forget which seasons have what) have the size of B5 in them...
simont: A picture of me in 2016 (Default)
posted by [personal profile] simont at 08:19am on 18/10/2010
If I remember rightly, S1's narration gives the mass ("humans and aliens wrapped in two million five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night") and S2's gives the length ("a self-contained world five miles long, located in neutral territory"). S3's concentrates more on the plot than the setting, and S4's and S5's are collections of snippets and don't really have time to mention such details.

(With mass and length mentioned, one feels time ought to have turned up as well. I suppose "The year is 2258+n" for 0 ≤ n ≤ 4 might count, but that's not a dimension of the station. Perhaps Sleeping in Light ought to have had a modified narration :-)
 
posted by [identity profile] pjc50.livejournal.com at 10:58pm on 17/10/2010
The metaphorial ten-foot pole with which things will not be touched? Nine milimetre (& various other calibres)? Eight mile? A pint?
 
posted by [personal profile] mobbsy at 08:19am on 18/10/2010
People usually use area units for 2D objects in popular culture (and in real life), such as Hundred Acre Wood or Three Acres and a cow. Similarly for volumes, people use volume units, such as 10 gallon hat.

Of course, there's the Wales and Olympic Swimming Pool units commonly used for area and volume.

Are you specifically looking for examples where people specify multiple linear dimensions in popular culture? I suppose the Square Mile is sort of an example?
ptc24: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] ptc24 at 08:51am on 18/10/2010
The square mile is getting there. Multiple linear dimensions is sort of what I'm aiming at. I pretty much started with 1x4x9 and thought "there must be other things like that".

On a whim I looked up 2x4 on wikipedia, and that wasn't how I'd imagined it. I know that it's 1.5x3.5 really which makes it flatter, but the thing in my imagination is closer to square that 2x4 would suggest. The imagination can be a silly thing at times.

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