Fermi Questions

Space-time

  1. How may BB's will fill up a basketball?
  2. How many physics textbooks, lined up as they are on a library shelf, would be needed to wrap around the earth once?
  3. How many CHEERIOS are there in a box (15 oz. net wt.)?
  4. How many cartwheels would an astronaut have to do to circle the moon?
  5. What is the thickness, in cm, of a page from a paperback book?
  6. How many golf balls would it take to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool?
  7. How many red blood cells are need to top a small cheese pizza?
  8. If you built a model of an atom with the nucleus 1 cm in diameter, what would be the overall diameter of the model in cm?
  9. The Earth currently loses a millisecond of rotation every year. If this rate of loss has been continuous, how many 24 hour days have been lost since the Earth was formed?
  10. How many sitcoms could you watch while counting from one to one billion?

Velocity

  1. If the historical "shot heard round the world" could in fact be heard around the world, how many seconds would it take?
  2. How many seconds will it take an ant to walk from San Diego to San Francisco?
  3. How many seconds would it take to ski from the top of Mount Everest to the bottom, assuming a 30 degree slope?
  4. How far, in meters, does an average person walk during an average lifetime?
  5. How many inches does a fingernail grow in one second?
  6. If it were possible to walk from here to the moon, how many years would it take?