Fermi Questions C

[Raleway]

Hello SciOly Community

This will be my first year doing Fermi Questions, and I have no clue how I'm meant to study/practice for it.
I went to the link provided earlier in this thread (http://www.fermiquestions.com/play), however, it seems that the website needs to be renewed.
Do you guys have any idea what I should use to study?

Thanks in advance!

Hoooo boy. You've arrived at the wrong neighborhood. Memorize general math facts like the speed of light, distances, anything. For example, if you know approximately how long your fingers are, and they ask you to approximate how many blahs make a blah and you know how many of your fingers make up something, you can approximate! That's the basis of fermi- making good, sound estimates and negating error with sound mathematics! Good luck!

[Raleway]

Best event (had a blast proctoring this at MIT last year)!

You, sir, are the person that doesn't allow me to sleep soundly at night (look at my signature!). Double irony twist M Night twist alliteration- I don't know anymore

[jkang]

You, sir, are the person that doesn't allow me to sleep soundly at night (look at my signature!). Double irony twist M Night twist alliteration- I don't know anymore

What makes you say that? The fact that I called Fermi "best event," or that I proctored it at MIT?

Do you guys have any idea what I should use to study?

Personally I've learned that having an intuition of the scale of things helps a lot more than knowing random trivia in general. For example, vaguely knowing about something (ex the Eiffel Tower), can you reason a decent guess of its height? Besides that there are certain numbers that are useful to know - masses such as that of Earth, Sun, etc, volumes of the great lakes and oceans, etc. Best of luck!

[Raleway]

@JKang
You create sadness when I see fermi problems and cannot solve them

[sluelway1973]

Does Anyone have a Key for the 2006 National test?

[OrigamiPlanet]

Does Anyone have a Key for the 2006 National test?

I don't believe national test results would be revealed, however you could try looking into the test exchange if you haven't tried it yet.

[CVMSAvalacheStudent]

How is this a study event if you're basically estimating?

[NeilMehta]

How is this a study event if you're basically estimating?

Although it is estimating, you are estimating by knowing the values of important constants and knowing about different units and how to convert between them. Even though Fermi does not require competitors to find an exact value, the event expects a lot by asking for incredibly large answers, in addition to not being allowed to bring in resources or notes. In addition, it's a pretty straightforward event, with set answers for each question.

[PM2017]

Is there a limit to the amount of scrap paper given to the teams?
(I don't know why, but I remember thinking we only had one piece)

[Unome]

Is there a limit to the amount of scrap paper given to the teams?
(I don't know why, but I remember thinking we only had one piece)

The only limit is that imposed by the event supervisor. Really, the only thing that I can think of which would require significant hand calculations would be logarithms and other math problems.