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[Hans Lemurson]

I was pondering the number 833 and why that's used for the amount of fluid in a minecart.  Why 833?  What meaning does it have?
The first thought is that 833 is 2500/3, but that doesn't make sense because liquid levels are in units of 7.
Then I had an epiphany: what do I get if I multiply 833 by 7?  5831. 
And what's the cube root of 5831?  17.999  That's within a rounding error of perfect!  The volume of a tile must be a cube of 18x18x18 of some sort of unit.  If we conveniently assume 10cm as the base unit, then a cell is 1.8 meters in size, and each 10cm cube represents one unit of fluid, and a 10cm cube is 1 Liter!

...um Hans

It just works so perfectly!  It's measuring in common units!

Hans, there's something

I'm a gosh darned numerical GENIUS

there's something important...

Oh shush, let me revel in my glory.

Minecarts deliver 2/7 of liquid.

Right, that's what I'm saying, so you multiply 833 by 7, and you get 18 cubed.

833 is 2/7, not 1/7.

 
 
...
I'll be back next week with more amazing mathematical discoveries.

[Raven]

"he speaks the language of the gods"

[Putnam]

Minecarts in the raws have 500000 capacity, so 833 is neatly explained by each unit of liquid_misc water being 600 ml

[Hans Lemurson]

Minecarts in the raws have 500000 capacity, so 833 is neatly explained by each unit of liquid_misc water being 600 ml

Indeed.  It was 2500/3 after all! (In the form of 500,000/600)

If 2/7 of liquid fills 500,000cc of minecart, and 7/7 liquid completely fills a tile, then this says that a tile's Volume is 1,750,000cc.
Cube-root that, and you get 120.5 centimeters for the dimensions of one tile.  Slightly under 4 feet.  It could also be 100x100x175 tall.

All of this is assuming that a game where a Bronze Colossus fits into a single tile, a sock can jam a door open, and a boulder can be divided into 4 blocks which can each completely wall-in a tile...
We are still somehow expecting it to keep track of Volume with perfect accuracy.

[Blue_Dwarf]

Are devs using the metric system for DF? Maybe all this would make more sense with imperial units.

[Putnam]

Are devs using the metric system for DF? Maybe all this would make more sense with imperial units.

they are and it wouldn't

[Hans Lemurson]

If we imagine the 600cc liquid units as a base unit of volume, then there are 2916 of them in a tile.
The cube root of 2916 is...14.28 

Ah-hah! 14.28 can be approximated by 100/7

A tile is one hundred sevenths of a miscellaneous glob in width. 
Clearly intentional, part of the blessed designs laid down by the Great Toad himself.

Because everybody knows that if something can be approximated by an integer ratio, that it is a sign of divine inspiration.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be off to probe the mysteries of Pi being 22/7. (10 fingers + 10 toes + 2 eyes to see with, then divide it by the 7 days of the week?  Yep, checks out.)

[Blue_Dwarf]

Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science?

[Schmaven]

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be off to probe the mysteries of Pi being 22/7. (10 fingers + 10 toes + 2 eyes to see with, then divide it by the 7 days of the week?  Yep, checks out.)

I've always used pi out to 4 decimal places, but since it's an irrational #, all calculations just use an approximation anyway.  22/7 is both easy to use and close enough for government work 

[TruePikachu]

I don't believe there's actually any explicit meaning behind it. The number comes about because a minecart has 500,000 capacity and a glob of water/magma has volume 600, so you can fit 833 globs in with 200 volume left over. However, since you can only ever put two liquid depth units into a minecart at a time, the game "pretends" that that full minecart has 2 liquid depth units inside. If you ignore the quantization error for fluid in a minecart and assume the full 500,000 volume is holding liquid, you would come up with the volume of a tile being 1.75m^3, but I don't think this agrees with minecart physics.

Personally, I think the minecart holding two liquid depth units came about because a bucket holds one liquid depth unit, and minecart is obviously larger than bucket. I can't find the actual volume of a bucket right now, though, so I can't say how the two compare on that front.

(One volume unit is 1mL is 1cm^3, for the record; this is specified via the raws.)

[jipehog]

The illusive hunt for the theory of DF, seems like there is no boundary to human scientific endeavor!

[Thorfinn]

100 gallons of water at 39 F (maximum density) is about 834#.

[TruePikachu]

The illusive hunt for the theory of DF, seems like there is no boundary to human dwarven scientific endeavor!

You just reminded me of the time a bronze colossus was enlisted to take global temperature measurements to determine the axial tilt of the world.

Also, ftfy.

[Hans Lemurson]

Buckets hold 10 units of liquid, and yet transfer 1/7 depth.   Hmm...

And 2 buckets of water freeze into a solid ice wall, which melts into 7/7 liquid...

1+1 = 7, and 10+10 = 833.

Clearly there's a unique form of addition going on here.   

Surely it can't be a collection of BS numbers that "sort of seemed right" at the time. 
No, this is all part of a greater plan beyond our puny mortal comprehension. 

[TruePikachu]

Buckets hold 10 units of liquid, and yet transfer 1/7 depth.   Hmm...

And 2 buckets of water freeze into a solid ice wall, which melts into 7/7 liquid...

1+1 = 7, and 10+10 = 833.

Clearly there's a unique form of addition going on here.   

Surely it can't be a collection of BS numbers that "sort of seemed right" at the time. 
No, this is all part of a greater plan beyond our puny mortal comprehension. 

In that case, buckets and minecarts are enclosed vessels which pressurize fluids under some circumstances. Even though water is incompressible. This also explains why you can't overfill a minecart with rocks; the lid enforces that it all fits inside.

Science!

EDIT: I did the math. Before people ask questions, this is the TI nSpire CX II CAS, which has a touchpad (hence the mouse cursor in the screenshots). The assumptions are that water is kept at the standard underground temperature, and kept as a compressible fluid (e.g. water vapor) despite that it should by all means be non-gasous at this pressure (I figure dwarves probably have the technology to do this).


Just for fun, I put that final result into Wolfram|Alpha:


Science!