Buzz
You’re probably familiar with a 100-yard football field or a 50-meter Olympic swimming pool, but what about the everyday buildings and landmarks around us? This guide puts their sizes into perspective in a way that’s both easy to grasp and, at times, a bit mind-boggling.
1. Pencil; 7.5 inches
A standard No. 2 pencil measures 7.5 inches from the eraser’s end to the unsharpened tip. Interestingly, this is also the average length of the adult male hand, measured from wrist to the tip of the longest finger.
2. Mailbox; 3.75 feet
According to the United States Postal Service, a typical mailbox stands 45 inches tall, or 3.75 feet. That’s about six pencils (or adult male hands) stacked on top of one another.
3. Elephant; 8.2 to 13 feet
The average African elephant (larger than its Asian relative) measures about 8.2 to 13 feet tall at the shoulder, which is equivalent to 2.2 to mailboxes. When measured from trunk tip to tail end, it reaches about 23 to 29 feet, or 276 to 348 inches, roughly 37 to 46 pencils in length.
4. Washington’s Nose on Mount Rushmore; 21 feet
Talk about a big nose! At 21 feet long, the largest nose on Mount Rushmore belongs to the first U.S. president, George Washington. (Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln’s noses are each about a foot shorter.) To put it in perspective, that’s roughly the size of a small African elephant with its trunk extended—though not quite its tail.
5. Yellow School Bus; 36 feet
A typical yellow school bus stretches 36 feet in length. For an educational comparison, that’s equivalent to 57.6 pencils placed end-to-end.
6. The White House; 70 feet
Three and a third of Washington’s noses could fit inside the White House. In fact, it’s large enough to hold seven medium-sized elephants stacked on top of each other.
7. Niagara Falls; 167 feet
The combined height of the three drops that make up Niagara Falls is 167 feet—equivalent to nearly eight of Washington’s colossal noses. This is also the same as 19 elephants or 44 and a half mailboxes stacked together. For comparison, the world’s tallest waterfall, Angel Falls in Venezuela, rises 2,647 feet, nearly 706 mailboxes high.
8. Eiffel Tower; 986 feet
The iconic Eiffel Tower in Paris stands at 986 feet, almost six times the height of Niagara Falls.
9. Empire State Building; 1,250 feet
New York’s iconic Empire State Building stands even taller, reaching nearly 18 times the height of the White House. Alternatively, it would take about 2,000 No. 2 pencils stacked vertically to match its towering stature.
10. Grand Canyon; 8,000 feet
Mother Nature’s masterpiece, the Grand Canyon, towers above even the most famous man-made structures. To match the elevation of the Grand Canyon’s North Rim, you’d need six and a half Empire State Buildings or over eight Eiffel Towers stacked on top of each other. For an even more exotic comparison, that’s roughly 889 elephants piled up.
11. Golden Gate Bridge; 8,980 feet
If you tried to park 249 school buses bumper-to-bumper, they’d cover the entire length of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Lay the Eiffel Tower down horizontally, and you could fit 9.1 of them on the bridge. Alternatively, you could line up 14,368 pencils from end-to-end and make a continuous trail.
Measuring landmarks, animals, and household items doesn’t always have to involve elephants or pencils. With the Intel RealSense™ snapshot, you can measure virtually anything simply by snapping a photo. Discover more here.
