Math Question- HELP!
 

Hey, math men and women- I'm writing a script about spiders and the movies' attempts to make them scary (I work for a zoo, remember) and I need some math help- one of the points in the script is that even the largest spider is still pretty small in relation to a human. The largest spider, (the Goliath Spider, if anyone's interested) can grow to 12 inches across (yes, pretty big, and gross if you step on it, but still crushable). What I need to know is, what fraction of a person's size is that? Say a 5'8" person, to strike a happy medium. A thirtieth the size of a person? Does anyone know how to figure that out?

I'll find the weight if that's necessary.

Thanks in advance!

I think you can do it by ratio....

12in/68in

3/17ths....how's that...

that's not pretty...I'd use 1/6

I would think you'd want to look into the weight too. How tall is the spider? Because if it's like 2 inches tall but 12 inches across, it's misleading to say that it's 1/6 the size of a human, unless we are counting how wide humans are too!

Someone kill me.

If it grows to 6 inches twice would it still be gross if you stepped on it?

LOL, I agree just giving her what she ask for:D

Please!

With spider poison?

My Great Aunt Ev would have said that's a non-issue as it's bad luck to kill spiders. :)

Here's the weight: one to three OUNCES. That's it. So, how does that change the ratio? Let's say a 5'8" person, weighing 150lbs. What ratio makes it sound the least impressive? Remember, I'm trying to make the point that spiders aren't really all that scary, when you compare us by size.

You guys are the best; thanks for helping me with this.

Here's video:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...ula-video.html

Well by weight, it would take 800 of them to equal a 150 lb human being, and that's being generous in saying that every single one of them weighs a full three ounces.

So in reality, they are about one tenth of one percent the weight of an "average" human. Not so scary.

Well that's not going to be that impressive....your 150lb person is 2400 ozs

so that's 1/800when it comecome weight. Size wise I think Brian has the right idea...maybe height/length/width of each compared or something like that.

To further illuminate it, this guy could lift some 3800 of them.