The driving distance comparison between countries amused me, mostly because of this: http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/national-location-information/dimensions/australias-size-compared

The driving comparisons even in the USA get amusing. The population on the east coast is much denser so those who live there are amazed at the distances they need to drive in the middle and west part of the country. (many Americans are amazed there is no ferry between Australia and New Zealand, I know it is close to flying across either the USA or Australia)

I am a US Army brat, so I spent a good part of my youth being driven to one part to another. My last year in high school was in the middle of Texas, and another Army brat friend in my physics class had moved from the east coast, where his dad had mostly been assigned during the years he cared (middle/high school). He was shocked that folks in Texas would drive more than an hour to get to a shopping mall!

A saying that could be used in more than one Australian state: "The sun has riz and the sun has set, and we ain't out of Texas yet."

Greg and I spend 6 days driving around Queensland once and we barely encompassed a tenth of it.

Always great to see another SE2KB podcast pop up on my reader, it makes my week. Love a bit of chemistry in my se2KB podcast especially when Dan decides to make a quip about 'boiling hot' that leads to discussions of the different boiling points of metals. Interestingly two of the metals discussed Lead and Gallium, lead melts at 327.5oC where as Gallium melts at 29.7 but then Lead boils at 1749oC where as Gallium stays liquid till the much hotter at 2400oC. Sorry but I find the theory and explanations of why these elements behave like this fascinating.

Also excellent memory of these temperatures, pretty close and the boiling point on Nitrogen -195.8oC, FYI it melts at -210oC

Wait! WHAT?!! Holy Crap! It never occurred to me that this could happen.

I am not surprised.

The USA has 48 states that are actually connected to each other that are near the area of Australia (Alaska and Hawaii require a wee bit more travel over either Canada or the Pacific Ocean). Australia has six states. Just by using math alone, we can assume those states are huge*!

So I suggest: "The sun has riz and the sun has set, multiple times, and we ain't out of this Aussie state yet!"

That just does not flow. Can you figure out a better way to express the largeness of Australian states? Perhaps it should include that it takes almost a "week" or <b>more</b> to transverse?

• This assumes someone clicked on the link in my previous comment that shows the contiguous USA is close to geographic size to Australia... except the latter is surrounded by lots more ocean instead of countries like Canada and Mexico. Seriously the size relationship is freaky.