Fermi Questions C

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

Post by Unome »

PM2017 wrote:
Name wrote:
Unome wrote: I've reworded my question to make it more clear.
A percentage goes up to 100 percent... You can't have 130,000 percent of all deaths be from sharks. E5 is the total deaths/E11 which is -6 or as a percentage -4. Also sources I saw online said the rates of deaths were slightly lower so possibly -5
This is a more coherent version of what I was saying.
Oh I thought it was about my question. What was wrong with my answer? I ended up with ~1/100,000 deaths are from shark attacks and extrapolated from there.
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by PM2017 »

Unome wrote:
PM2017 wrote:
Name wrote:
A percentage goes up to 100 percent... You can't have 130,000 percent of all deaths be from sharks. E5 is the total deaths/E11 which is -6 or as a percentage -4. Also sources I saw online said the rates of deaths were slightly lower so possibly -5
This is a more coherent version of what I was saying.
Oh I thought it was about my question. What was wrong with my answer? I ended up with ~1/100,000 deaths are from shark attacks and extrapolated from there.
Well the question wasn't how many deaths are caused by sharks, so you went too far.
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Re: Fermi Questions C

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Unome wrote:
PM2017 wrote:
Name wrote:
A percentage goes up to 100 percent... You can't have 130,000 percent of all deaths be from sharks. E5 is the total deaths/E11 which is -6 or as a percentage -4. Also sources I saw online said the rates of deaths were slightly lower so possibly -5
This is a more coherent version of what I was saying.
Oh I thought it was about my question. What was wrong with my answer? I ended up with ~1/100,000 deaths are from shark attacks and extrapolated from there.
The question specifically asked for percentage. According to Google it's 1/3,748,067 or about 3E-7 not E-5 (though sources do change I don't realistically think it's as high as E-5).
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by Unome »

Name wrote:
Unome wrote:
PM2017 wrote: This is a more coherent version of what I was saying.
Oh I thought it was about my question. What was wrong with my answer? I ended up with ~1/100,000 deaths are from shark attacks and extrapolated from there.
The question specifically asked for percentage. According to Google it's 1/3,748,067 or about 3E-7 not E-5 (though sources do change I don't realistically think it's as high as E-5).
oh darn...

Edit:
Unome wrote:How many more people are diagnosed with esophageal cancer each year in the US than are diagnosed with mesothelioma?
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by PM2017 »

Unome wrote:
Name wrote:
Unome wrote: Oh I thought it was about my question. What was wrong with my answer? I ended up with ~1/100,000 deaths are from shark attacks and extrapolated from there.
The question specifically asked for percentage. According to Google it's 1/3,748,067 or about 3E-7 not E-5 (though sources do change I don't realistically think it's as high as E-5).
oh darn...

Edit:
Unome wrote:How many more people are diagnosed with esophageal cancer each year in the US than are diagnosed with mesothelioma?
Both seem to types of cancers, (-oma signifies cancer) but since I haven't heard of mesothelioma, I would say its rarer. I would think that not more than e5 people are diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the US per year because any higher and you get a significant portion of the population. And I wouldn't think that this other type of cancer occurs less than e3 to e4 types per year. I feel like my initial e5 for esophageal cancer was a bit high, so I'm going to choose [b]1[/b] instead of 2 as my final answer.
200,000 people are diagnosed by esophageal cancer in the US annually, and 20,000 with mesothelioma which works out rather smoothly, to a fermi answer of [b]1[/b]
I don't know if you'll be able to verify an answer to this question later, but here goes anyways:
If I had as many copies of the Beowulf, Heaney translation, as would be as long as all the forums posts made on this website since 2008, how much would they weigh? (assume all the books are paperback)
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by Name »

PM2017 wrote:
Unome wrote:
Name wrote:
The question specifically asked for percentage. According to Google it's 1/3,748,067 or about 3E-7 not E-5 (though sources do change I don't realistically think it's as high as E-5).
oh darn...

Edit:
Unome wrote:How many more people are diagnosed with esophageal cancer each year in the US than are diagnosed with mesothelioma?
Both seem to types of cancers, (-oma signifies cancer) but since I haven't heard of mesothelioma, I would say its rarer. I would think that not more than e5 people are diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the US per year because any higher and you get a significant portion of the population. And I wouldn't think that this other type of cancer occurs less than e3 to e4 types per year. I feel like my initial e5 for esophageal cancer was a bit high, so I'm going to choose [b]1[/b] instead of 2 as my final answer.
200,000 people are diagnosed by esophageal cancer in the US annually, and 20,000 with mesothelioma which works out rather smoothly, to a fermi answer of [b]1[/b]
I don't know if you'll be able to verify an answer to this question later, but here goes anyways:
If I had as many copies of the Beowulf, Heaney translation, as would be as long as all the forums posts made on this website since 2008, how much would they weigh? (assume all the books are paperback)
The question asks for how many more, not how many times more, indicating subtraction. 180,000 or E5

Also could you clarify the question? Like a copy for any post? Every page? Every thread?
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by PM2017 »

Name wrote:
PM2017 wrote:
Unome wrote: oh darn...

Edit:
Both seem to types of cancers, (-oma signifies cancer) but since I haven't heard of mesothelioma, I would say its rarer. I would think that not more than e5 people are diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the US per year because any higher and you get a significant portion of the population. And I wouldn't think that this other type of cancer occurs less than e3 to e4 types per year. I feel like my initial e5 for esophageal cancer was a bit high, so I'm going to choose [b]1[/b] instead of 2 as my final answer.
200,000 people are diagnosed by esophageal cancer in the US annually, and 20,000 with mesothelioma which works out rather smoothly, to a fermi answer of [b]1[/b]
I don't know if you'll be able to verify an answer to this question later, but here goes anyways:
If I had as many copies of the Beowulf, Heaney translation, as would be as long as all the forums posts made on this website since 2008, how much would they weigh? (assume all the books are paperback)
The question asks for how many more, not how many times more, indicating subtraction. 180,000 or E5

Also could you clarify the question? Like a copy for any post? Every page? Every thread?
Ah, I'm used to how many more being how many more as a factor, sorry.

Also, think of it as one copy = however many posts have as many words as one copy of the book.
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F »

PM2017 wrote:
Name wrote:
PM2017 wrote:
Both seem to types of cancers, (-oma signifies cancer) but since I haven't heard of mesothelioma, I would say its rarer. I would think that not more than e5 people are diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the US per year because any higher and you get a significant portion of the population. And I wouldn't think that this other type of cancer occurs less than e3 to e4 types per year. I feel like my initial e5 for esophageal cancer was a bit high, so I'm going to choose [b]1[/b] instead of 2 as my final answer.
200,000 people are diagnosed by esophageal cancer in the US annually, and 20,000 with mesothelioma which works out rather smoothly, to a fermi answer of [b]1[/b]
I don't know if you'll be able to verify an answer to this question later, but here goes anyways:
If I had as many copies of the Beowulf, Heaney translation, as would be as long as all the forums posts made on this website since 2008, how much would they weigh? (assume all the books are paperback)
The question asks for how many more, not how many times more, indicating subtraction. 180,000 or E5

Also could you clarify the question? Like a copy for any post? Every page? Every thread?
Ah, I'm used to how many more being how many more as a factor, sorry.

Also, think of it as one copy = however many posts have as many words as one copy of the book.
There's maybe 5 posts per active person every day, with maybe 50 active people for every day, giving 250 posts per day * 365 days per year * 10 years = 9E5 posts. With an average of 100 words/post, that gives 9E7 words. One copy of Beowulf has maybe 100 words per page and 400 pages, giving 4E4 copies of Beowulf. They all weigh at most three kilograms, which gives a Fermi answer of 5 (in kilograms).
Not sure how I would check this one..

Give the distance from Earth to Alpha Centauri in terms of the distance traveled by A4 paper undergoing free fall for 10 hours.
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by sciencegirl03 »

Distance to Alpha Centauri: 4.5light years; i.e. 4.5 * 10^16m\
Paper falls at 1m/sec so in 10 hrs= 36000meters
Fermi answer 11
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Re: Fermi Questions C

Post by Name »

sciencegirl03 wrote:Distance to Alpha Centauri: 4.5light years; i.e. 4.5 * 10^16m\
Paper falls at 1m/sec so in 10 hrs= 36000meters
Fermi answer 11
Free fall implies acceleration not a constant velocity. Also try to write a attempt and a solution with the hide option in formatting. Also put a question after the answers.
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