Fermi Questions Marathon

[hmcginny]

So each teenager pops maybe 1 pimple every 10 days, so E-1 pimples/day, E1 pimples/year, E2 pimples /10 years, there are E8 teenagers during those years, so E10 pimples.

I asked a question last time: 75! but if no one wants to answer that, i'll ask another.

How many gallons of gas will be consumed in the US this year?

[Schrodingerscat]

I will assume a person consumes a gallon per day on average, so that would be 3E8*3E3 or 9E11 gallons per year in the US for private driving. However, then there are the various commercial uses of gasoline, but I will estimate E12 anyway.

How many people spending a career doing arithmetic (assume many significant figures in scientific notation) by hand would it take to produce an equal number of calculations as the worlds fastest super computer, K Computer, does in one second?

[quizbowl]

I will assume a person consumes a gallon per day on average, so that would be 3E8*3E3 or 9E11 gallons per year in the US for private driving. However, then there are the various commercial uses of gasoline, but I will estimate E12 anyway.

How many people spending a career doing arithmetic (assume many significant figures in scientific notation) by hand would it take to produce an equal number of calculations as the worlds fastest super computer, K Computer, does in one second?

K Computer! I remember reading an article saying that it was named after some Japanese word meaning a quadrillion or something, so I'd guess E15 or so.
How many tons of ink have been used by Science Olympiad competitors since the inception of Science Olympiad in 1985?

[hmcginny]

Do you mean tons of ink purely used in competitions? I'll assume that's what you meant. So there have been 2.6E1 years of competitions, currently there are around E5 competing students (E4 schools and E1 students per schools), but Science Olympiad has been growing and started small, so probably -E5 students during those years, meaning E7 students cumulative, who took -E1 tests each year at competitions so -E8 tests taken, however not everyone uses pen, so lets bring it down to E7 tests in pen, I have no idea how many grams of ink on each test, but lets assume E-2 g so E5 g total or E2 kg or E-1 tons.

How many earths would fit inside the sun?

[quizbowl]

radius of sun: 7E5km
radius of earth: 6E3km

radius = 4/3pir^3 or just r^3
(7E5)^3=3E17
(6E3)^3=2E11

divide it out -> E6.

How many chicken eggs could fit inside a schoolbus?

[hmcginny]

School bus is -E2 cubic meters, chicken egg is E1 cubic cm or E-5 cubic meters so E7 chicken eggs

How many notes will be played this year at competitions for the event Sounds of Music?

[quizbowl]

School bus is -E2 cubic meters, chicken egg is E1 cubic cm or E-5 cubic meters so E7 chicken eggs

How many notes will be played this year at competitions for the event Sounds of Music?

Lets say on average that each team goes to two competitions (might be a bit off) and therefore each team plays four songs and does the scales twice. Considering that a scale going up and down is about E1 notes, and with 240 seconds to play there might be on average 1 note/sec, there would be 2.5E2 notes played per competition X 2 would be 5E2 notes per team over all competitions.
There's 6E3teams in scioly, but probably half are Division C so 3E3 * 5E2 = 1.5E6.

Considering the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow (doesn't matter whether African or European), how many years would it take for this bird to fly once along the path that Pluto uses to orbit the sun ? (Assume the effects of space are negligible and that the bird not only has an oxygen pack but an endless supply of energy and an anti-gravity belt).

[Schrodingerscat]

Considering the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow (doesn't matter whether African or European), how many years would it take for this bird to fly once along the path that Pluto uses to orbit the sun ? (Assume the effects of space are negligible and that the bird not only has an oxygen pack but an endless supply of energy and an anti-gravity belt).

That would be 4E1 m/s, and the distance to pluto is about 1E13 m, so thus 1/4E12 or 2E11 seconds, 4E2 days per year and 8E4 seconds per day, so 32E6 or 3.2E7 seconds per year, so 6E3 years, so E4 years.

How many ZettaFLOPS (Floating Point Operations Per Second) is a human with paper and pencil?

[hmcginny]

I have no idea what a floating operation is, but if its some sort of arithmetic, I would guess the average human does around E-1 of them per second (maybe 1 every 10 seconds). Since there are E21 somethings in a zetta-something, a human does E-22 zettaFLOPS.

How many atoms are there in the bodies of the the entire human population?

[quizbowl]

I have no idea what a floating operation is, but if its some sort of arithmetic, I would guess the average human does around E-1 of them per second (maybe 1 every 10 seconds). Since there are E21 somethings in a zetta-something, a human does E-22 zettaFLOPS.

How many atoms are there in the bodies of the the entire human population?

There's 7E9 people, average human mass is 70kg, so thats 70,000g, a mole is 6.02E23 so it should be around 1E29 atoms/person. multiply it out and get 7E38. However I feel like that since human bodies aren't 100% hydrogen/carbon, it's an overestimate, so I'd say 38 is right.

How many ounces of gold would it take to completely gold-plate the hull of the Titanic?