Ukraine is determined to flatten Khalino air base, situated just 50 miles from the front line of Ukraine’s surprise invasion of Russia

MicroWave@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 375 points –
Ukraine Is Determined To Flatten Khalino Air Base, Situated Just 50 Miles From The Front Line Of Ukraine’s Surprise Invasion Of Russia
forbes.com
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50 miles = 80.47 km (rounded)

50 miles = 4223989.5 hammer units (rounded)

Converting miles to kilometers and vice versa is a fun exercise to do in your head

The Fibonacci sequence (where every number in the sequence is a sum of the previous 2 numbers) has a ratio of Fib(n)/Fib(n-1) converging to the golden ratio phi (~1.618) as n approaches infinity.

A mile is 1.609 kilometers, so the ratio of phi is an extremely close approximation of that.

What this means is you can easily use the Fibonacci sequence to quickly convert from miles to kilometers using adjacent numbers in the sequence

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, ...

So you can quickly see something like 5 (or 50, or 500) miles is approximately 8 ( or 80, or 800) kilometers.

Also, yiu can quickly do easy multiplication or division to figure out other approximate distance.

Say, for 6 miles. 3 miles ( * 2) = 5km ( * 2) = 10km.

For 11 miles, 55 miles * 2 = 110 miles / 10 = 11 miles, and 89 km * 2 = ~180 km / 10 = 18 km [actual conversion is 17.703 km, so, pretty close]

You can do similar approximations by using other multiples.