SortStack #347 — 2027-05-22
By duration · Order from shortest to longest.
- A chameleon's tongue reaching its insect prey 72 ms
Small chameleons have the fastest tongues, accelerating at hundreds of g — proportionally the most powerful movement of any reptile, bird, or mammal.
- One human heartbeat at rest 798 ms
Your heart beats roughly 100,000 times a day and around 3 billion times in a lifetime, pumping enough blood to fill an Olympic pool several times over.
- 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.
- The Wimbledon tennis championships 14 days
The tournament's famous rest day, the 'Middle Sunday', was only abolished in 2022 after 145 years of tradition.
- The construction of the Empire State Building 1.1 years
Crews added roughly four and a half storeys per week, finishing ahead of schedule and under budget during the Great Depression.
- The age of the Lascaux cave paintings 17K years
Four teenagers and a dog named Robot found the caves in 1940 — visitor breath damaged the art so badly that today tourists see a replica.