# Is Snapple just MSU now? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 20, 2010, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132 "2010-05-20T15:33:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![cjepson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a9adbd/32.png) [@cjepson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cjepson)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/1 "2010-05-20T15:33:24Z")
You know the little fun facts that Snapple prints on the inside of its bottle caps. Recently I’ve seen some that seem rather incredible, such as “A cubic mile of fog contains less than a gallon of water” and “Any Rubik’s Cube configuration can be solved in 17 moves or less”. It almost makes me wonder if they’ve started just making shit up and waiting to see how long it takes before someone calls them on it. (I could perhaps be convinced about the Rubik’s Cube one, but I just don’t know about the cubic mile of fog deal.) ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/2 "2010-05-20T15:38:13Z")
The latest Rubik’s cube proof puts the maximum number of moves for any cube at 22. No idea where they got 17 from, although obviously there are a large number of configurations that _can_ be solved in 17 moves, nobody has proven that all of them can be. ---
**Author:** ![TerpBE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc8723/32.png) [@TerpBE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TerpBE)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/3 "2010-05-20T15:54:19Z")
> [@cjepson](#): > > You know the little fun facts that Snapple prints on the inside of its bottle caps. Recently I’ve seen some that seem rather incredible, such as “A cubic mile of fog contains less than a gallon of water” According to this: [http://www.rexresearch.com/airwells/airwells.htm](http://www.rexresearch.com/airwells/airwells.htm) > [@](#): > > Fog contains from 0.05 gram of water per cubic meter, up to 3 grams. 1 cubic mile = 4.16818183 × 10^9 cubic meters so 1 cubic mile of fog should contain ~210,000,000 - 12,000,000,000 grams of water, or about 500,000 - 25,000,000 lb. Water is about 8.35 lb/gallon, so it should be about 60,000 - 3,000,000 gallons of water per square mile of fog. So assuming I did these calculations correctly, Snapple is only off by a factor of around a million. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/4 "2010-05-20T15:55:41Z")
Cool: [Rubik’s Cube-solving robot](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaRcWB3jwMo&feature=player_embedded) made entirely of LEGO. Well, maybe not _entirely_, but mostly. ---
**Author:** ![TerpBE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc8723/32.png) [@TerpBE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TerpBE)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/5 "2010-05-20T16:08:51Z")
Here’s a correction posted by a newspaper who posted the “fact” about fog: [http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061026/news\_lz1c26eureka.html](http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061026/news_lz1c26eureka.html) > [@](#): > > A recent “True Facts” item (Oct. 12) stated that a cubic mile of fog contained less than a gallon of water. A few astute readers doubted the veracity of that statement, some offering their own calculations. > > Kurt K. Urbaschek, for example, estimated that a cubic mile of fog containing 70 grains of moisture per pound of air – a condition that exists at 60 degrees with 90 percent humidity – would contain **13.6 million gallons of water**. Other sums are possible, depending upon ambient conditions, but in all cases the estimated amount of water in a cubic mile of fog is exponentially higher than 1 gallon. > > In our defense, we note the original citation came from a publication called “The Book of Useless Information.” > > It would seem to be aptly named. If you google “A cubic mile of fog contains less than a gallon of water”, it’s shocking how many sites state this statistic as a fact. ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/6 "2010-05-20T16:21:03Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > The latest Rubik’s cube proof puts the maximum number of moves for any cube at 22. No idea where they got 17 from, although obviously there are a large number of configurations that _can_ be solved in 17 moves, nobody has proven that all of them can be. There are 20 parts of the cube that can be out of place; wouldn’t the theoretically lowest possible minimum number of moves be 19? ---
**Author:** ![TerpBE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc8723/32.png) [@TerpBE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TerpBE)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/7 "2010-05-20T17:03:37Z")
> [@panamajack](#): > > There are 20 parts of the cube that can be out of place; wouldn’t the theoretically lowest possible minimum number of moves be 19? That line of reasoning would assumes that each piece could be moved to its correct location in a single move, without affecting the position of the other pieces. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/8 "2010-05-20T17:13:49Z")
> [@TerpBE](#): > > Here’s a correction posted by a newspaper who posted the “fact” about fog: > > [http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061026/news\_lz1c26eureka.html](http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061026/news_lz1c26eureka.html) > > If you google “A cubic mile of fog contains less than a gallon of water”, it’s shocking how many sites state this statistic as a fact. Probabably all the same sites that claim “a duck’s quack doesn’t echo.” :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![groman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/73ab20/32.png) [@groman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/groman)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/9 "2010-05-20T17:28:23Z")
Back of the envelope calculation leads me to believe a gallon of water would make roughly 10 cubic yards of fog. A square mile of fog would have to be less than a millimeter thick to be only a gallon of water. ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/10 "2010-05-20T18:03:53Z")
> [@TerpBE](#): > > That line of reasoning would assumes that each piece could be moved to its correct location in a single move, without affecting the position of the other pieces. The line of reasoning is intended to establish a lower bound, not an upper one. If it has a flaw, it is that more than one piece is moved with each move…if you just rotate one side of a solved cube by 90 deg, then you can restore 8 pieces from wrong positions to correct positions with only a single move. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/11 "2010-05-20T18:17:46Z")
> [@Joe Frickin Friday](#): > > Probabably all the same sites that claim “a duck’s quack doesn’t echo.” :rolleyes: But the real question is … can you get fog off a duck’s back and not have it echo when you do? ---
**Author:** ![JocoseBanter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7ab992/32.png) [@JocoseBanter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JocoseBanter)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/12 "2010-05-20T18:30:42Z")
> [@Duckster](#): > > But the real question is … can you get fog off a duck’s back and not have it echo when you do? Only on a treadmill. ---
**Author:** ![Dag\_Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@Dag\_Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dag_Otto)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/13 "2010-05-20T18:32:31Z")
“But it’s a dry fog.” ---
**Author:** ![Omphaloskeptic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bcef8e/32.png) [@Omphaloskeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omphaloskeptic)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/14 "2010-05-20T18:46:32Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > The latest Rubik’s cube proof puts the maximum number of moves for any cube at 22. No idea where they got 17 from, although obviously there are a large number of configurations that _can_ be solved in 17 moves, nobody has proven that all of them can be. The standard Rubik’s cube has 4.325E19 reachable configurations. If a “move” is defined as one of the twelve face quarter-turns, then the number of configurations reachable in 17 or fewer moves is at most 12[sup]17[/sup]+12[sup]16[/sup]+…+1=2.42E18 (actually it is fewer, since some of these moves commute), so 17 moves cannot be enough. They may be using a more expansive notion of a single “move”, though. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/15 "2010-05-20T21:43:58Z")
In discussions of the Rubic’s Cube, I’ve usually seen a 180 degree turn of a face counted as a “move”, too. That’d bring us up to 18[sup]17[/sup] + 18[sup]16[/sup] + …, or over 2E21 moves. However, then there’s the commutations you mention: At the very least, you should never make two moves to the same face in a row, so for your first move you have 18 possibilities, but only 15 for each subsequent move. So you’d actually be looking at 18_15[sup]16[/sup] + 18_15[sup]15[/sup] + …, which gives us around 1.26E20 reachable configurations. Meanwhile, with only 16 moves, you get 8.44E18 configurations. So given that definition of a “move”, a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation proves that the perfect solution must sometimes take more than 16 moves, but is consistent with 17 moves possibly being enough. From this, it’s reasonable to guess that 17 might be the correct number, and this is probably the source of the Snapple statistic. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/16 "2010-05-20T22:31:09Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > In discussions of the Rubic’s Cube, I’ve usually seen a 180 degree turn of a face counted as a “move”, too. That’d bring us up to 18[sup]17[/sup] + 18[sup]16[/sup] + …, or over 2E21 moves. However, then there’s the commutations you mention: At the very least, you should never make two moves to the same face in a row, so for your first move you have 18 possibilities, but only 15 for each subsequent move. So you’d actually be looking at 18_15[sup]16[/sup] + 18_15[sup]15[/sup] + …, which gives us around 1.26E20 reachable configurations. Meanwhile, with only 16 moves, you get 8.44E18 configurations. > > So given that definition of a “move”, a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation proves that the perfect solution must sometimes take more than 16 moves, but is consistent with 17 moves possibly being enough. From this, it’s reasonable to guess that 17 might be the correct number, and this is probably the source of the Snapple statistic. I agree with your analysis. (I think – I’m not too great at this stuff.) 17 seems a reasonably likely target, but nobody has yet proven that it’s possible. ---
**Author:** ![Omphaloskeptic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bcef8e/32.png) [@Omphaloskeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omphaloskeptic)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/17 "2010-05-20T22:45:53Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > So given that definition of a “move”, a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation proves that the perfect solution must sometimes take more than 16 moves, but is consistent with 17 moves possibly being enough. From this, it’s reasonable to guess that 17 might be the correct number, and this is probably the source of the Snapple statistic. The [Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_solutions_for_Rubik%27s_Cube) mentions two configurations which require 26 quarter turns and 20 face turns, though. So 17 is out again unless the definition of “move” is broadened even further. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/18 "2010-05-20T22:48:59Z")
did you know that 63% of statistics are made up on the spot? ---
**Author:** ![AWB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bb73d2/32.png) [@AWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AWB)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/19 "2010-05-20T22:55:28Z")
> [@ed malin](#): > > did you know that 63% of statistics are made up on the spot? Only 34.5% of the time. ---
**Author:** ![Number](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/number/32/242_2.png) [@Number](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Number)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132/20 "2010-05-20T23:32:03Z")
I heard something like that from [Todd Snider](http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=BMQdtyot38s) (video with two NSFW words). [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-snapple-just-msu-now/540132.md?page=2)