Anyone who has ever been to the UCD campus will be familiar with the raised water tower. Built over seven days in 1979, it was designed by A & D Wejchert Architects to provide constant water pressure to all buildings across campus.
Winner of the prestigious Irish Concrete Society Award in the year it was built, the tower is tall and concrete… and not dissimilar to what your average golf tee looks like.
Ever wonder how tall a golfer would need to be to use it as one though? Well, turns out you’re not alone and one Twitter user has finally put the conundrum to rest.
Sharing a photo of the tower in question, Simon (AKA @simodoho) tweeted to say:
“The whole time I was at UCD I used to look at the water tower and wonder, if the tower were a golf tee, how tall would the golfer be. So after a very long time, I decided to find out.”
The whole time I was at UCD I used to look at the water tower and wonder, if the tower were a golf tee, how tall would the golfer be. So after a very long time, I decided to find out. A thread: pic.twitter.com/NGbH6XW2M6
— Simon☜ ( ʘᴗʘ☜) (@simodoho) March 1, 2021
How did he go about doing that one might ask? Seems there was quite a lot involved in the process.
“First thing I needed was a clear view of the water tower from sea level. So I cycled out into the bay when the tide was out and got my photos.
“Then I needed to find out the standard golf tee and golf ball size, and convert to metric. So the golf tee is 4.27cm and the golf ball 8.26cm.
“Next I superimposed an 4.27cm golf tee over the UCD water tower and added some golf balls to start to get a sense of scale…”
Once all that was done, Simon turned his attention to the golfer. Settling on Rory McIlroy as his player of choice, a quick online search found that he’s 1.75m – approximately 41 golf balls tall.
Fast forward a couple of steps and according to Simon’s calculations, “Mega McIlroy” would need to be 1230m tall to use the tower as a golf tee.
“The height of the UCD water tower is 60m. So at my picture scale, that makes Mega McIlroy approximately 1230m tall, about 230m higher than Carrauntoohil, 400m taller than the Burj Khalifa, dwarfing Godzilla & quite possibly visible from Wales on a clear day.”
The height of the UCD water tower is 60m. So at my picture scale, that makes Mega McIlroy approximately 1230m tall, about 230m higher than Carrauntoohil, 400m taller than the Burj Khalifa, dwarfing Godzilla & quite possibly visible from Wales on a clear day. pic.twitter.com/YDbZdDHhv7
— Simon☜ ( ʘᴗʘ☜) (@simodoho) March 1, 2021
Quite the journey that, but I think I speak on behalf of everyone when I say we’re glad to finally have some answers.
Header image via Twitter/@simodoho
