CBS News Radio description of Galveston tar balls, "ping-pong" sized. Ping-pong sized?

[ko_kyi]

How much is that in nano-Rhode Islands?

[a fool in paradise]

The largest tar balls found Saturday were the size of ping-pong balls, while the ones found Sunday were the size of nickels and dimes.

Golf Balls and Ping Pong Balls are approximately the same size.

[DrC]

“Golf Balls and Ping Pong Balls are approximately the same size.”

Right, but I infer from your diagram that the oil blogs probably are more analogous to ping-pong balls in terms of flow.

But if this were a deliberately deceptive choice of terms, it occurs to me that ping-pong balls also are light and airy (quite fun!), with little risk of bodily harm, easy to sweep or pick up off the ground. In contrast, golf balls are very heavy—virtually the opposite of ping pong balls in the all the aspects just described.

[DrC]

“It’s as common as sand down there. No biggie!”

That’s what I couldn’t figure out. I saw pea- to lima bean-sized oil globs on the beach at Cape May NJ—not EVERY time we went, but frequently enough to be memorable (my vague recollection is that stormy weather would kick them up). The point being that if an oil spill occurred, I wouldn’t be able to distinguish the blobs that were naturally occurring from the ones specifically attributable to the spill.

That said, it would be rare to see golf-ball-sized blobs and you wouldn’t get covered in oil while swimming. The only way these could affect you is if you stepped on one and it would be like stepping in soft asphalt (i.e., needing turpentine if you wanted to remove the black mark immediately).

[basil]

Actually, some of the “natural” oil globs in Galveston could be pretty big. We just didn’t go to the beach for a couple of days, and when we returned, they’d be gone.

[Terry Mross]

Great point! Golf ball sized is the term we need to constantly use.

[stevie_d_64]

We were just down in Galveston last night...Had dinner right on the seawall...

Saw one news truck coming from East Beach on our way back home, and had to summize that they had to go wayyyyyyyyy out east to find a “new tarball”...

I guess in my cynisism that I could weigh the effects of a tarball on the beach to the carbon footprint left by the news truck in tracking down that wayward tarball...And the energy wasted by the reporter-ette doing the newsbit for that local network...

If I had a dollar for everytime (over the many years) I stepped on a tarball on a Galveston beach...I’d be in a much better situation...

[a fool in paradise]

They say there were accounts of naturally occurring tarballs on the beach going back to the 1500s.

But like the reporter(ettes) standing in flood waters saying “don't get in the water!” or looking for the street sign blowing in the wind during a hurricane, it's inevitable.