SortStack #60 — 2026-08-08
By duration · Order from shortest to longest.
- A mantis shrimp throwing its famous punch 3 ms
The strike accelerates like a bullet and creates collapsing cavitation bubbles that briefly flash with light and heat — prey gets hit twice by one punch.
- A Venus flytrap snapping shut on a fly 102 ms
The plant can count: it only snaps after two trigger-hair touches within about 20 seconds, which keeps it from wasting energy on raindrops.
- An amber traffic light before it turns red 4 sec
Amber phases are tuned to road speed — typically 3 seconds in town and up to 6 on fast roads, calculated from braking distance physics.
- Alcock and Brown's first nonstop transatlantic flight 16 h
The 1919 crossing ended nose-first in an Irish bog they mistook for a meadow. Brown had climbed onto the wings mid-flight to chip off ice.
- The construction of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona (so far) 143.9 years
Begun in 1882 and still unfinished, it only received an official building permit in 2019 — Gaudí said 'my client is not in a hurry'.
- How long the Parthenon has been standing 2.5K years
It survived largely intact for over 2,000 years — until 1687, when a Venetian shell hit the gunpowder the Ottomans had stored inside.