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Part 1: "What Order of Magnitude?" Game - Getting A Feel For Magnitudes

The document provides examples of "Fermi questions" which are rough quantitative estimates of quantities from everyday experience. It includes 30 descriptions of various physical phenomena and asks the reader to estimate the power of ten that is closest to the actual quantity described. For example, estimating the number of letters in the alphabet as 10^1, since it is closer to 26 than 260. The goal is to get a sense for orders of magnitude without precise calculations.

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131 views4 pages

Part 1: "What Order of Magnitude?" Game - Getting A Feel For Magnitudes

The document provides examples of "Fermi questions" which are rough quantitative estimates of quantities from everyday experience. It includes 30 descriptions of various physical phenomena and asks the reader to estimate the power of ten that is closest to the actual quantity described. For example, estimating the number of letters in the alphabet as 10^1, since it is closer to 26 than 260. The goal is to get a sense for orders of magnitude without precise calculations.

Uploaded by

AliiAmiir
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Part 1: What order of magnitude?

game Getting a feel for


magnitudes
"About how many chairs are in your room? Is it more like 2, or 7, or 15?"
You probably didn't really need to count. Just looking at things, you have a feel for
whether there are "a couple", or "a few", or "a dozen". You have done it enough times
that you now have a feel for it, an intuition.
"How many people have you talked with today? Is it more like 1, or 10, or 100?"
"How much time have you spent reading this? Is it more like 1 minute, or 10 minutes, or 100
minutes?
"How far away is home? Is it more like 1 kilometer, or 10 kilometers, or 100 kilometers?"
"How tall is that building? Is it more like
(a) one meter, or
(b) ten meters, or
(c) a hundred meters, or
(d) a thousand meters, or
(e) ten thousand meters?"
Hmm... could it be 1 meter? Well, unless it's a doll-house building, it has to be a lot
bigger than 1 meter. So (a) is out. Could it be 10,000 meters? Well... isn't a kilometer only
a few thousand meters? It doesnt seem the building could be a kilometer tall. So it has to
be less than 10000 meters. So it's (b), (d), or (e). Could it be 10 meters? What do we
know thats about 10 meters big? Hmm... how tall are people? So if the building is a
couple of people high, (b) sounds good. Oh, but that means (d), 1,000 meters, would be
how high? 100 people high!? That doesnt sound right. Except maybe for a skyscraper.
So it looks like (b) or (c), depending on how tall the building is.
A process of "Well, if it's (q), what does that mean? Ok, but we know mumble mumble...
So it can't be (q), thats too way too big! So it has to be between (m) and (r). Lets see,
what else do we know? Well, if it's (m), what does that mean? Ok...". "So, to wrap up, we
have concluded it has to be between (o) and (p)."
"How many cats and dogs live near you? Is it more like
(0) 1
(1) 10
(2) 100
(3) 1000
(4) 10000
(5) 100000"

So you see, you can also come to have a feel for what order of magnitude (how many
zeros) things have.

Part 2: Fermi Questions Rough quantitative estimates


"... the estimation of rough but quantitative answers to unexpected questions about many
aspects of the natural world. The method was the common and frequently amusing
practice of Enrico Fermi, perhaps the most widely creative physicist of our times. Fermi
delighted to think up and at once to discuss and to answer questions which drew upon
deep understanding of the world, upon everyday experience, and upon the ability to make
rough approximations, inspired guesses, and statistical estimates from very little data."
Philip Morrison
INSTRUCTIONS: For each of the following descriptions, fill in an answer with a number
representing the factor that 10 is raised to most closely approximate what is described.
For example, to represent the area of a 2300 square meter house, you would answer 3,
since 2300 is 2.3 103. If a number is something like 7000, you should actually answer
4 since 7000 is 7.0 103, which is closer to 104 than it is to 103. You will be given 5
points for each correct answer, 3 points for each answer that is off by only one factor of
ten, and 1 point for each answer that is off by only two factors of ten. You have 30
minutes to complete as many of the 30 answers as possible. You may use scratch paper,
pencil, eraser, and your partner; but you may not use calculators, computers, references, or
any other outside information.

1.

Description
Our current elevation above sea level (in meters):

Answer
10^2

2.

The area of an average adults skin (in square meters): 10^-13

3.

Number of gallons of ice cream consumed in Utah last 10^6


year:

4.

Volume of Earth (in cubic meters):

10^10000

5.

Number of tennis balls that could fit into this room:

10^3

6.

Number of letters in the alphabet:

10^1

Score

7.

How many dollars would each person on this planet


10^0.1
possess if there were a "mole" of dollars to distribute?

8.

Number of births per year in world:

10^1

9.

Number of frames in a 2-hour long motion picture:

10^5

10.

Number of stars viewable to the naked eye on a clear, 10^1


dark night:

11.

Number of hairs on the average human head:

10^4

12.

Ratio of age of universe to age of a human lifespan:

10^300

13.

Height of a piece of paper if it could be folded in half 10^0.01


50 times (in meters):

14.

Number of cellular phones currently used in the U.S.: 10^5

15.

Number of motor vehicles in the world:

10^8

16.

Total length of wire on spool (sitting on desk in this


room), in meters:

10^3

17.

Tons of gravel held in the back of a dump truck:

10^2

18.

Time it takes light to travel from Mars to Earth (in


seconds):

10^4

19.

Number of cockroaches in the U.S.:

10^9

20.

Mass (in kilograms) of exhaust produced by one tank 10^3


of gasoline burned by a large truck/SUV:

21.

The power output of the Sun is 400-trillion-trillion


10^7
Watts. How many incandescent light bulbs would be
necessary to output energy at the same rate?
Time (in seconds) spent sleeping over an entire
10^15
lifetime:

22.
23.

Fraction of one year equal to one second:

10^16

24.

Total energy exhausted by one person in a lifetime (in 10^10


food calories):

25.

Area (in square meters) of entire human population if 10^5


everyone crowded together:

26.

Total area of Earth (in square kilometers):

27.

Gallons of soft drinks consumed in the U.S. each year: 10^9

28.

Speed at which human hair grows (in meters per


second):

10^0.001

29.

The thickness of rubber (in meters) lost with each


rotation of a cars tire on the road:

10^0.0001

30.

Number of electrons in a liter of water:

10^3

10^15

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