Fermi Questions C

Test your knowledge of various Science Olympiad events.
RJohnson
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by RJohnson »

NeilMehta wrote:
New question: what is price of single item in the displays at the NYC Apple Store converted to japanese yen?
Not entirely sure what you meant here, but here's my guess:
My guess is the new iPhone is what is currently in the displays at the apple store, price = $800 = 8e2. If I remember correctly, the yen floats around e2 yen to the dollar, so that takes the price in yen to 8e4, which rounds to fermi answer of 5. Next Question: How many carbon atoms are in the average american?
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by whythelongface »

RJohnson wrote:
NeilMehta wrote:
New question: what is price of single item in the displays at the NYC Apple Store converted to japanese yen?
Not entirely sure what you meant here, but here's my guess:
My guess is the new iPhone is what is currently in the displays at the apple store, price = $800 = 8e2. If I remember correctly, the yen floats around e2 yen to the dollar, so that takes the price in yen to 8e4, which rounds to fermi answer of 5. Next Question: How many carbon atoms are in the average american?
The average American masses maybe 2E2kg. That's 2E5g.

Assuming the body is only about 25% non-water by mass, that's 5E4g of organic molecules and proteins. Estimating that organic molecules are around 80% carbon by mass, we get 4E4g of carbon. 6E23 atoms mass 12 grams, so the Fermi Answer would be [b]27[/b].

Edit: Oh dearie me, I really mistook kilograms for pounds. The average human weighs maybe 70 kg. The answer, however, was [b]27[/b], which means that another of my estimations was an order of magnitude off.
The Tsar Bomba was a thermonuclear test with a warhead yielding a total energy output equivalent to 50 megatons of TNT (already this is more information than I should be giving you, but I think this might be obscure). Using this information, calculate the number of simultaneous detonations needed to equal the energy output of the Sun throughout its lifetime.
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by NeilMehta »

RJohnson wrote:
NeilMehta wrote:
New question: what is price of single item in the displays at the NYC Apple Store converted to japanese yen?
Not entirely sure what you meant here, but here's my guess:
My guess is the new iPhone is what is currently in the displays at the apple store, price = $800 = 8e2. If I remember correctly, the yen floats around e2 yen to the dollar, so that takes the price in yen to 8e4, which rounds to fermi answer of 5. Next Question: How many carbon atoms are in the average american?
Gah, sorry, I meant to say every single.. my fault
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by Torterra »

The luminosity of the sun is about 1E24W. I know this fluctuates, but I'm going to assume it's constant. Assume the sun has a lifetime of 10 billion, or 1E10 years. There are 3E7 seconds in a year, which gives a total time of 3E17s. P=E/t, so the total energy is 3E41J. 1 kilogram of TNT has about 1E6J. This means that one Tsar Bomba has about 5E16J. Divide 3E41 by 5E16 to get an answer of 25.

Question: If you stack every single order of playing cards(unique shuffling of a standard 52 card deck) on top of each other, how many times can you go from earth to the sun?
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by appleshake123 »

FA:52
There's 52! orders possible. Each order of a deck is about half an inch. The light from the sun takes like 8.33 min to get from there to the earth and e1min *e2s/min * e8m/s = e11 metre
Distance of 52! orders = 52!* e-2m =
2*3 = 6
7*8 is about 50
22*23 is about 500
30*31 is about 1000
51*52 is a bit more than 2500
5/2ish e1s = e3
17/2ish e2s = e17 
29/2ish e3s = e45 
Total order amount is about e65.
e65 orders * e-2m size * 1 eart-sun amount/e11m = e52
So the first part of the distance from the earth to teh sun is right at 1.5e11
52! = 8e67
Deck of card thickness = 5/8 inch oro 1.5e-2m
8e67 * 1.5e-2m/1 * 1d/1.5e11 = e55
I underestimated the factorial amount greatly which I should of expected as pairs between 32-52(10 pairs) are rounded down to e3 versus the 22-31(about 5 pairs) rounded up. I shouldve just added a few more exponents after the underestimation.
If every student only ate cookies for the rest of their student career as replacement for their daily meals(in terms of Caloric intake), how many hours of jump pullups amongst every student would they need to burn 60% of their total cookie consumption?
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by whythelongface »

Since the question is a bit vague, I will make a few assumptions. I will take "student" to mean K-12. Also, judging from your question, wouldn't any food item do? You're not asking for anything based off the number of cookies, you're asking total Caloric intake, which should stay constant whether you're eating cookies or pizzas. In other words, unless I'm misinterpreting something, "cookies" didn't have to be specified. I probably didn't understand the question fully, but here goes.

The growing child needs on an average about 1800 Calories a day. (I am basing from K-12). 60% of that is 1000 C/day. That's 3.7E5 Calories a year, or about 4.5E6 Calories K-12.

Assume one hour of high-intensity exercise burns 100 Calories, That gives a Fermi Answer of [b]4[/b].

If you meant "entire academic career" like undergrad, grad school, I'd say that jacks it up by about a magnitude, yielding [b]5[/b].
If you allowed an entire grocery store's stock of 12-oz coke to go flat, what is the volume the carbon dioxide would occupy in one atmosphere?
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by NeilMehta »

whythelongface wrote:
Since the question is a bit vague, I will make a few assumptions. I will take "student" to mean K-12. Also, judging from your question, wouldn't any food item do? You're not asking for anything based off the number of cookies, you're asking total Caloric intake, which should stay constant whether you're eating cookies or pizzas. In other words, unless I'm misinterpreting something, "cookies" didn't have to be specified. I probably didn't understand the question fully, but here goes.

The growing child needs on an average about 1800 Calories a day. (I am basing from K-12). 60% of that is 1000 C/day. That's 3.7E5 Calories a year, or about 4.5E6 Calories K-12.

Assume one hour of high-intensity exercise burns 100 Calories, That gives a Fermi Answer of [b]4[/b].

If you meant "entire academic career" like undergrad, grad school, I'd say that jacks it up by about a magnitude, yielding [b]5[/b].
If you allowed an entire grocery store's stock of 12-oz coke to go flat, what is the volume the carbon dioxide would occupy in one atmosphere?
gonna completely guess, but, let’s say each bottle has E-1 m^3 of CO2. Assuming the store has about E2 packs of 36 each, there should be E1 m^3

Solution:
apparently each can has about E-3 of CO2...
True answer: E-1
New question: how many base pairs of DNA are there in a human?
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by whythelongface »

Eukaryotic DNA has about E6 bps per molecule. If the human body has E10 cells (purely guessing right now, likely a very large underestimation), that means E16 bps, or E13 kbps.

Actual answer: REALLY off. For starters, the human body has about E13 cells, and each molecule of eukaryotic DNA has about E9 bp (I must've meant E6 [i]kbp[/i].) So it's actually E22 bps
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He went out and hanged himself and then there were none."

Congratulations to WW-P South/Grover for winning 2nd/1st place at NJ States!
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by Torterra »

If the entire population of the earth was converted to energy and used to power a MacBook Air, how far would the chain of all the electrons that pass through the MacBook in that time stretch in light seconds?
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by Unome »

Torterra wrote:converted to energy
I will assume that this is via the energy-mass equivalence.
- 7E9 people, ~7E1 kg each, multiply to get 5E11 kg of human biomass.
- Converting to energy in joules by multiplying by 3E8 meters per second twice gives 1.5E28 joules.
- Joules to electron volts - ~1.5E19 (if I remember correctly), so ~3E47 eV - multiply by ~100 volts (random guess) to get ~E49 electrons.
- An electron is probably ~E-20 meters, so ~E29 meters.
- Convert to light second by dividing by 3E8 meters, gives ~E21.
Fermi Answer: 21
- 2.87E11 total biomass.
- Convert to energy gives 2.583E28 Joules.
- It looks like the MacBook Air takes 110 volts, so that's 1.77E49 electrons.
- The classical electron diameter is 5.64E-15 meters (darn...) which gives almost exactly E35 meters.
- Converting gives 3.34E26 light-seconds.
Actual Fermi Answer: 26
You drop a golf ball from the top of the Empire State Building - when it hits the (perfectly elastic) ground, it causes a vibration. How many golf balls would have to simultaneously hit the ground at the same point to produce a seismic wave as powerful as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake?
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