Thursday, February 27, 2003
How far does Trolley on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood travel in a single year?
I LOVE questions like this. It brings out the geek in me. Stop for a moment and come up with your own guess before you continue reading.
I said, DO NOT continue reading until you make your own guess.
So here was my thought process: Behind the couch is about 10 feet of track, so a round trip is 20 feet. In the Land Of Make Believe, there is about a 30 foot arc surrounding the castle, so a round trip is 60 feet. Add that to the couch track and a little fudge factor, and I estimate 100 feet per episode. I assume 5 episodes a week, so therefore 500 feet per week. I guess that Mister Rogers had a lot of free time, so maybe he worked half the year, or 26 weeks. 26 weeks times 500 feet per week equals 13,000 feet, or around 2.5 miles per year. That is my best guess.
According to the OFFICIAL Mister Rogers webpage, the answer is 5000 miles per year. No freaking way.
That same webpage says there are "only" about 900 episodes of Mister Rogers. Using round numbers, let's say he did 900 episodes over 30 years; that comes to just 30 episodes a year. To cover 5000 mile in 30 episodes, Trolley would have to travel 167 miles every episode. No freaking way. Maybe they are make-believe miles? Or scale miles? If we assume Trolley is about 1/15th scale, he would still have to go over 10 real miles every episode to meet that number.
Mister Rogers would never lie. So the only possible conclusion is that The Land of Make Believe was a very real place 80 miles away.
http://www.misterrogers.org/mister_rogers_neighborhood/faq.asp
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I LOVE questions like this. It brings out the geek in me. Stop for a moment and come up with your own guess before you continue reading.
I said, DO NOT continue reading until you make your own guess.
So here was my thought process: Behind the couch is about 10 feet of track, so a round trip is 20 feet. In the Land Of Make Believe, there is about a 30 foot arc surrounding the castle, so a round trip is 60 feet. Add that to the couch track and a little fudge factor, and I estimate 100 feet per episode. I assume 5 episodes a week, so therefore 500 feet per week. I guess that Mister Rogers had a lot of free time, so maybe he worked half the year, or 26 weeks. 26 weeks times 500 feet per week equals 13,000 feet, or around 2.5 miles per year. That is my best guess.
According to the OFFICIAL Mister Rogers webpage, the answer is 5000 miles per year. No freaking way.
That same webpage says there are "only" about 900 episodes of Mister Rogers. Using round numbers, let's say he did 900 episodes over 30 years; that comes to just 30 episodes a year. To cover 5000 mile in 30 episodes, Trolley would have to travel 167 miles every episode. No freaking way. Maybe they are make-believe miles? Or scale miles? If we assume Trolley is about 1/15th scale, he would still have to go over 10 real miles every episode to meet that number.
Mister Rogers would never lie. So the only possible conclusion is that The Land of Make Believe was a very real place 80 miles away.
http://www.misterrogers.org/mister_rogers_neighborhood/faq.asp
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