Fermi Questions C

[Angstrom]

This event is going to be fun. If any of you are interested in a more precise and less "silly" (by that I only meant the type of problems) form of Fermi - i.e. the original Fermi problem with the atomic bomb, and things like that, you should check out Caltech's Order of Magnitude Physics class - http://www.its.caltech.edu/~oom/ is the link. I don't think it's a good study resource for Fermi as an event, but it's fun to go through, and for me, that's more important.

And by the way, 70! is 10^106. I say this because a couple months ago, I was evaluating factorials and my calculator stopped at 66 or 67 factorial, suggesting that that's where you hit 10^100, so sqrt(67) * 68 * 69 * 70 = 70^3.5 = 343000 * sqrt(70) = 3e6.

[quizbowl]

This event is going to be fun. If any of you are interested in a more precise and less "silly" (by that I only meant the type of problems) form of Fermi - i.e. the original Fermi problem with the atomic bomb, and things like that, you should check out Caltech's Order of Magnitude Physics class - http://www.its.caltech.edu/~oom/ is the link. I don't think it's a good study resource for Fermi as an event, but it's fun to go through, and for me, that's more important.

And by the way, 70! is 10^106. I say this because a couple months ago, I was evaluating factorials and my calculator stopped at 66 or 67 factorial, suggesting that that's where you hit 10^100, so sqrt(67) * 68 * 69 * 70 = 70^3.5 = 343000 * sqrt(70) = 3e6.

Actually, 70! is about 10^100.

[Bogoradwee]

quiz is right. I just checked with the calculator on my computer. I got 1.198e100

[lllazar]

Ok so i'm a bit perplexed right now by the answer key for this test:

Test: http://scioly.org/w/images/e/e2/2008_FermiWayzata.pdf
Key: http://scioly.org/w/images/c/cc/2008_Fe ... ataAns.pdf

Look at questions 2-4. The answers are completely wrong, or I am failing epically at math.

, and thus the answer for 2 should be . Look at 3 and 4 as well, they should be and respectively....

[hmcginny]

so for 2 it's actually saying 10 ^ (10^-10). 10^-10 is 1E-10, so the problem is really asking what is 10 ^(1E-10). 1E-10 is very close to 0 so your answer is 0. You just placed the parentheses incorrectly when you were doing it in your head.

3 is 10^(10^(10^-10)), 10^-10 is 1E-10, 10^(1E-10) is 1 as seen above, so the answer is 1.

4 is 10^(10^(10^(10^-10))), use the stuff from three to get down to 10^(10^1) which is 10^10 so the answer is 10.

I hope that helped. I think your only problem was your idea of where the parentheses would go.

[lllazar]

Thanks

[cngu23]

Are you allowed anything in with you (paper, pencil, calculator)?

Just a writing utility. Nada mas.

So for this event, will all of the problems be solved by multiplying stings of unit conversions? Or may there be a problem such as how many years will it take for the population to reach 1 trillion? (growth rate formula + conversions)
Just want to make sure because some of the questions asked in the "fermi questions marathon" do not only involve multiplication.

[Schrodingerscat]

I would personally be prepared for more than simple multiplication and conversion problems, as the rules never specifically limit it to them.

[cngu23]

I would personally be prepared for more than simple multiplication and conversion problems, as the rules never specifically limit it to them.

"In science, particularly in physics or engineering education, a Fermi problem, Fermi question, or Fermi estimate is an estimation problem designed to teach dimensional analysis, approximation, and the importance of clearly identifying one's assumptions."
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem

So I guess it could be more complicated than just unit conversions and multiplication. But so far, all of the sample problems haven't been more complex than that.

[quizbowl]

I found it hilarious that the Training Powerpoint is basically the wiki (exactly copied word for word at points) in powerpoint format