Yes, this is a rather silly and pointless question, but it just popped into my head one day, and I just have no clue how I could go about figuring it out with my limited expertise and resources.
I just want to know, which is greater? The approximate number of human testicles in the world today, or the approximate number of artificial balls of (almost) any kind in the world today. Testicles I am counting individually, not by the pair. By balls I am referring to any artificial (man made, but not necessarily synthetic) spheroid (other than testicles) which would comonly be reffered to as “a ball” in everyday speech, not just any sphere. Counted would be baseballs and other sports balls (I’ll include footballs), meatballs, cannonballs, crystal balls, etc. etc. etc. Not included would be cocoa puffs, eyeballs, Lucielle Ball, large social dances, globes, marbles, etc. etc. For the sake of competition i’m throwing out certain balls that are produced in extreeme numbers that will completely throw the results, such as Buckey balls…as wells as, I am assuming, ball berings, but I’d love to see numbers on those as well just in case. I am of course not looking for exact numbers, but I very much want to get as accurate a comparison as possible, as far as an average approximation.
Hoping someone doesn’t think this is TOO dumb to investigate,
Much thanks!
~Rev. Elgaroo Brenza
It is pretty obvious to me that there are more artificial balls. Think about ball bearings for example. The average first world person would own machines ranging from cars to ceiling fans that have dozens of them. There are way more in industrial use. If you count carefully, I wouldn’t be suprised if the average person owns hundreds of balls or more.
As for the biological balls: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the world population as of today is 6,495,100,079. Approximately 49% of those are male. Assuming two balls per male, that gives a figure of 6,365,198,076. This figure must be reduced a bit to allow for balls lost through accident or surgery, or absent at birth, but my WAG is that this percentage is pretty small. (The percentage of supernumerary balls, I’ll wager, is negligible.)
I don’t know what the average lifetime of a golf ball is (I would suggest it still counts even when it’s been lost in the rough or is at the bottom of a water hazard), but there might even be more golf balls alone than testicles.
I have heard it said that a measure of our advancement as a technological race can be considered proportional to the number of motors we own - motors in fridges, cameras, food processors, toothbrushes, even little vibrating motors in our cellphones.
But I have to say I like this one better: We are advanced, because we have balls.
Although “ball bearing” should properly refer to the whole bearing, I have seen te individual balls themselves called “ball bearings”, as well.
And it should be noted that the world’s largest ball bearing, which supports the 40 meter telescope at Green Bank National Radio Observatory, consists of only a single ball.
Well, it’s not exactly in a socket (the section of the ball encased is far less than half the ball), but it does probably bear a lot closer kinship to a ball-and-socket than to the usual notion of a ball bearing. It is, however, definitely a bearing, and it’s indubitably a ball, and indeed it is mighty large.
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