Historical Albebra Story Problem

[captain_slinky]

ganked from the pages of gamera_spinning's journal...

In the late 1500s and early 1600s Countess Elizabeth Bathory murdered 600 girls and bathed in their blood because she believed it kept her young. There are 5 liters of blood in an average human, and her bathtub has a 50 gallon capacity, but figure it will only accomodate 30 gallons since she has to get into the tub. 5 liters = 1.32086026 gallons. Assuming she bathed in pure blood, unthinned by water, how many young women did she have to drain to supply a single bath?

For some reason, I see this as being a problem that Brittany would take to school to share with the class and get me in trouble with. But it's an excellent learning tool! It's got historical information! It's got algebra! It's got decapitated beauties! How could The School Board object?

Comments

[teegin.livejournal.com]

Well if you do the math and figure in a few variables I would say the countess probably used roughly 25 girls per bath assuming she filled the bathtub and didn't bath in the blood of each girl individually. If she used 25 girls per bath then I would say she took roughly 24 baths. Now take all these results with a plus or minus factor of 5-10. Now one must also keep in mind it is also not as easy as one would think to drain the entire 5 liters of blood per body and some bodies have a little more or less. 5 liters is an average after all. With that being said it may very well have taken more than 50 or 100 bodies per bathtub depending on the wastefulness of the, now I’m assuming her servants helped her with this part, person or persons draining the blood. Now if the servants simply cut a major artery while the victims were held over the tub and drained, were they strung up upside down the way a butcher would drain a side of beef, lets say, hanging above the tub allowing the blood to drain wasting less. Still remains the question of how long exactly does it take for the blood to congeal and begin to smell? For I believe the countess would prefer only fresh blood and probably wouldn’t like the smell of decay but then again know one knows.

Either way here is to Countess Elizabeth Bathory she really knows how to kill a party. May her memory live on forever in the hearts of those who knew her.

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

Aparently, she would cut off the head of the vitim and hang the body upside-down for about a day. She would also pike the heads from a candelabra to (a) get maximum drainage and (b) remind her of the beauty she was absorbing.

Fun gal, that Liz Bathory!