How Many Licks?: Or, How to Estimate Damn Near AnythingHow many licks to the center of a Tootsie Pop? How many people are having sex at this moment? How long would it take a monkey on a typewriter to produce the plays of Shakespeare? For all those questions that keep you up at night, here's the way to answer them. And the beauty of it is that it's all approximate! Using Enrico Fermi's theory of approximation, Santos brings the world of numbers into perspective. For puzzle junkies and trivia fanatics, these 70 word puzzles will show the reader how to take a bit of information, add what they already know, and extrapolate an answer. Santos has done the impossible: make math and the multiple possibilities of numbers fun and informative. Can you really cry a river? Is it possible to dig your way out of jail with just a teaspoon and before your life sentence is up? Taking an academic subject and using it as the prism to view everyday off-the-wall questions as math problems to be solved is a natural step for the lovers of sudoku, cryptograms, word puzzles, and other thought-provoking games. |
Contents
| 4 | |
| 6 | |
| 9 | |
| 11 | |
One Last Thing 13 | 13 |
PUZZLERS 14 | 14 |
| 173 | |
C Useful Numbers to Know 174 | 174 |
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 176 | 176 |
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acceleration of gravity ANSWER approximation Assume balloon base pairs bikers bits Bols burgers calculate cells Christo and Jeanne-Claude Colbert Colbert Report CONSTRUCT A FORMULA correct keys cost cube density doughnuts Earth energy engravings episodes flow rate fraction Gaedels Google search shows gravitational constant hair Harvard Bridge HELPFUL HINTS homeruns implants jelly doughnuts length of DNA lick lifetime MESSY MATH miles mole molecules Moon Multiply the number nails number of Calories obtain the number obtain the total Olympus Mons orgasm penny percent person probability of hitting problem radius RAMEN roughly rubber band scoops Smoot solar panels speed spider silk square there's thick tidal force Tootsie Pop total area total length total number total volume tree U.S. Census Bureau umbrella United wafer websites week weight What’s What's the distance world population wrapping