Its low energy-to-volume ratio renders it uneconomic to ship, which means pipelines are the only option.

FORBES: The Race for Energy Resources Gets Hotter

But accurately working out Mathilde's volume (necessary because density is the ratio of mass to volume) was harder.

ECONOMIST: Asteroids

My buddy who owns a string of McDonald's restaurants notes that credit card sales account for 16% of store volume, an unusually high ratio.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Its Variable Compression Engine can alter its compression ratio (the volume in a cylinder when the piston is up compared with the volume when it is down) from 14-1 to 8-1, depending on the circumstances.

ECONOMIST: Fuel economy

Secondly, the ratio of Nasdaq to NYSE volume fell below 100% for the first time since 1998, indicating a contraction of speculative buying.

FORBES: Magazine Article

The result, they claim in a paper that will appear this month in the Journal of Physical Chemistry, is a nanofibre material with an extremely high ratio of surface-area to volume.

ECONOMIST: Space-age soot

But as an object gets smaller, the ratio between its surface area and its volume rises.

ECONOMIST: Small wonders

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a five-to-one ratio, and more than 90.0% of the trading by volume was to the downside.

FORBES: Magazine Article