Spitting distance

On March 27, 2020 Randall Munroe posted the xkcd web cartoon shown above titled 6-foot zone, which is his Guide to the 6’ Social Distancing Zone. He humorously claimed that eight horses could fit inside that circle with you. A discussion at the Explain XKCD web site notes there is not really an Equestrian Design Handbook from the U.S. Forest Service.

Randall had described the zone as a circle with an area of 145 square feet. As shown above, this corresponds to a radius of 6.8 feet. But social distance just is a polite euphemism for quantifying spitting distance. That is how the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, explained it, as was reported by Josie Adams at The Spinoff on March 17, 2020 in an article titled Covid-19: everything you need to know about social distancing:

“In yesterday’s post-cabinet press conference, the prime minister defined social distancing as remaining outside of spitting distance of those around you. Social distancing is defined by the United States’ Centers for Disease Control as keeping a distance of six feet or two metres between you and another person…”

On November 21, 2017 I blogged about audience sizes in a post titled Is a large audience one where the speaker needs a microphone? Is a small audience where everyone can see a flipchart? In that post I noted, as shown above, that a square 12 feet on a side (with 144 square feet, or almost the same area as that circle), could hold a seated audience of 16 people. I described that audience size as being a boardroom.