Numeracy on the Road into Surrey

Just how big is the Flag at Flag Motors in Surrey?

Driving into Guildford the other day, we could see the huge flag as we came up the hill. My son was immediately fascinated by the size. “Mommy! How big is that flag!?” he exclaimed. I vaguely remembered in the early nineties, it was touted as the biggest in Canada or in the world or something to that effect but really, I had no idea, but had often wondered the same thing, so I decided to investigate.

I found out some interesting facts related to numeracy:
A standard Canadian flag is 36” by 72”, and the width of any Canadian flag should be twice its height.

The huge flag at Flag Chevrolet is apparently 40 feet by 60 feet. Hmm, this would mean that the huge flag is out of proportion.
According to this ratio, a 40' high flag should be 80' long. At 60' long, it is 20' short of the proper ratio. I question the accuracy of the person who gave me the measurements, as the flag doesn't appear to be so out of proportion.

Converting inches to feet, a standard size Canadian flag is 3 feet by 6 feet. On a properly proportioned flag of 40' by 80', you would be able to lay out 13 rows of 13 flags on top of it with a bit of room to spare. That's 169 flags! Goodness Gracious, that's huge!

I wonder how many cars would fit on top of this big flag if the employees at Flag Chevrolet decided to spent their time on a slow day parking cars on the huge flag?
My car isn't a Chev, but it is an American car, roughly the size of an average chevy...
I don't know the measurements of my car, but I can estimate it to be the size of a parking space. Looking on the web, I can glean that a parking spot is about 3.5 metres by 7.3 metres. To convert a metre to feet, I have to multiply it by 3.28. Converting 3.5 metres, I get 11.48 feet, and 7.3 metres comes out to 23.9 feet. For sake of my visualization of cars parked on the big flag, I will use an aproximate estimate of my car's size to be 11' by 23'.

That means in a 40' by 80' area (ie on the flag), I could park 9 cars with room enough between the cars for driver and passengers to get in and out of the cars.

Now the flag seems even more impressive, as these visualizations allow me to truly appreciate the size in a way that I can relate to.

Even more impressive? Looking on the web, this is not the biggest, just big. I found a picture of an American flag that was 255 feet by 505 feet (www.superflag.com )

That means you could lay out 6300 standard size Canadian flags on top of it. Now, that's a big flag!