Thanks to all who entered and gave the answer of approximately 10 hours. That is correct on the hour scale, but we toy geeks are, well, let’s say "more specific" than most people. So as fellow toy geeks and calculator owners, we did expect an answer accurate to at least the second (or about 5 figures after the decimal point, expressed in hours). And as expected, a few entrants did provide answers this accurate. You didn’t think we would make it easy, did you?

Jared Ackern of Junction City, KS (not far from Fort Riley) was the first to e-mail in the answer of 36066 seconds, or 10 hours, 1 minute, 6 seconds; received at 10:31 a.m. EST yesterday (Saturday). Rounded to the nearest second, that is correct. Congratulations, Jared; I’ll be e-mailing you shortly regarding the prize!

Several of you commented that you had fun figuring this out, and actually, we did too. As it turns out, there’s an even more accurate answer than the 36066 seconds above—one that is possible to express as an exact fraction. So for those of you who enjoyed getting the rust off of those brain cells to figure out the answer, we have some more useless information to feed your mind, along with a complete explanation of how to come up with the answer. Sit back, relax, and geek out for a moment; we won’t blame you for indulging.

Most of the entries followed the same series of steps, but there were some (admittedly intentional) tricks to the question. So let’s dissect it here:

For the purpose of this pop quiz, let’s assume that Hasbro’s new "Big Arsenal" AT-AT is exactly 28 inches tall. If Hasbro’s new "Big Arsenal" AT-AT were able to move at the same relative (scaled) speed as its full-size counterpart, how long would it take to walk across the entire full-size Super Star Destroyer Executor, if walking at maximum speed?

First, the only dimension we explicitly defined was height, so it was the measure upon which the entire question was based. This was intentionally confusing, because we were looking for an answer about travel time (usually referenced by length, not height), not relative size. Still, that relative size is important in order to figure out the scale of the Hasbro "Big Arsenal" (B.A.) AT-AT. So let’s consult an information source (we gave a clue where to look in the original question). The height of the full-size AT-AT is 22.5 meters. As 1 inch is equal to 0.0254 meters, that means that the scale of the B.A. AT-AT is exactly 889 to 28125, or approximately 1:31 2/3. By comparison, Hasbro’s action figures are approximately 1:18 scale.

I’ll point out that we didn’t convert meters to inches using the traditional 1 meter = 39.37 inch ratio. There’s a reason for that: it hasn’t been correct for over 50 years. Though this ratio was originally used for US survey measures (in fact, 12 inches, calculated this way, is officially called one U.S. survey foot), scientists had changed the ratio by 1933 to define the yard, foot, and inch in terms of the meter, rather than the other way round. This was codified in law for the U.S. and all U.K. Commonwealth countries on July 1, 1959. (Don’t believe us? Here’s the text from the Federal Register on June 25, 1959; and there’s a bunch of goodies for you history buffs in this official publication from 1963.)

But "so what", you ask? Normally the difference between 1:39.37 and 0.0254:1 is so small as to be ignorable. But here we’re not talking about the B.A. AT-AT walking across the kitchen floor; we’re talking about it walking across a full-size Super Star Destroyer. On that scale, just as for those early 20th century scientists trying to convert meters to yards for very long distances, a change of only 1 in 20 million can make a measurable difference… about four seconds, in this case. Anyway, let’s get back to the original question.

Next, now that we have the scale of the B.A. AT-AT, we can calculate its scaled maximum speed. A couple of you tripped up here and simply thought we wanted the speed of the full-size machine—but that wouldn’t be fun, now, would it? The calculation is simple; multiply the scale by the maximum speed of the full-size AT-AT (60 km/h), and you get 3556/1875 km/h, or approximately 1 8/9 km/h.

As a number, that seems pretty small; in a car, just under 2 km/h (about 1 mph) doesn’t even feel like moving. But it’s faster than you might think. The average human walking speed is around 4.5 km/h, meaning that only about two and a half times this speed. If you could take the B.A. AT-AT out for a walk, it might start panting trying to keep up with you, but sure would make a valiant effort at it.

Finally, we can calculate how long the B.A. AT-AT would take to cross the Executor. From the same information source, the Super Star Destroyer Executor is 19 km long. Just divide (not multiply!) by the speed; knowing that there are 3600 seconds in an hour, we get exactly 36065 715/889 seconds, just about 10 hours, 1 minute, 5.8 seconds, or 10.01828 hours in decimal. That’s one heck of a road trip in an AT-AT. Hope your Snowtroopers brought along some rations!

Calculators are allowed, but show your work (explain how you got to the answer). You must include citations to any sources of size information; Web links allowed.

Yo! Wookiepedia people! Stormy Sevenspire and his bio were APPROVED by LFL, so it’s not "fan fiction" — so when someone posts it, quit being so hateful. (Sorry, had to rant.)

Everyone 13 and older is eligible to enter. Kids, get a parent/guardian’s permission before entering (or doing anything these days). The prize will go to the first correct answer within a reasonable margin. It’s all out there, you just need to do some math. (On a FRIDAY - I am pure evil.)