Everyday Estimation

Sample questions

  1. How much money can be stolen from a Brinks armored car? In cash? In gold? In diamonds?
  2. What is the annual income of the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas?
  3. What fraction of UC Berkeley’s energy needs could be supplied by solar panels on the roof of every campus building?
  4. Estimate the mass of rubber liberated from car tires each year by cars traveling along the stretch of Highway 80 near Berkeley.
  5. How many airplanes are in the air at any given instant in time?
  6. Lead poisoning problem of Sterl’s (for homework).
  7. Swissair flight 111 from New York to Geneva crashed in Halifax, Nova Scotia on 2 September 1998, killing all 219 on board. As might be expected for a flight with this destination, the lawsuits and settlements have already made this the costliest air disaster in history ($600,000,000). Did this crash represent a significant fluctuation in the number of people in the world who die each day? (That is, would you notice 2 September 1998 on a graph of daily world deaths?)
  8. Can you read without a flashlight on Pluto?
  9. How many helium balloons would you need to tie to your chair to start floating away?
  10. Water usage:
    1. How much water (liters per year) is used to grow the food you eat?
    2. Estimate the mean annual rainfall (inches) over the planet Earth.
  11. You inhabit a space station that is 100 m on a side. The station is suddenly struck by debris that opens a hole 10 cm in radius. Do you have enough time to put on your spacesuit?
  12. A recent television ad campaigned against having casinos built in the Bay Area because it would add an estimated “400,000” cars to major highways every day. Is this a good argument?