SortStack #2009 — 2031-12-09

By weight · Order from lightest to heaviest.

1. A compact disc 15 g

   A CD's spiral data track is less than a micrometer wide and would stretch about five kilometers if unwound.

2. An official MLB baseball 145 g

   Every game ball is hand-rubbed with mud from a secret spot on a New Jersey riverbank to take off the factory gloss.

3. ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer 27 t

   Its 17,468 vacuum tubes filled a huge room in 1945. The phone in your pocket is literally billions of times faster.

4. A Saturn V rocket, fully fueled for a Moon launch 3K t

   Apollo crews rode atop a small warship's worth of kerosene, hydrogen, and oxygen — most of it burned within minutes.

5. A fully loaded Triple-E class container ship 250K t

   It hauls around 18,000 containers with a crew of only about 22 — fewer people than a fast-food restaurant shift.

6. The supertanker Seawise Giant, fully loaded 650K t

   The longest ship ever built could not transit the Suez or Panama canals — or even the English Channel — when fully laden.

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