Fermi Questions Test Booklet 2006 Wisconsin State Science Olympiad Event Supervisor: Alan Scott

Round your answer to the nearest integer exponent of ten. Write your answer clearly in the square box on the answer sheet. For example, suppose you needed to estimate a time quantity in units of seconds. Your answer was determined to be 7.54x104 seconds. Your answer should be

You are permitted to interact and talk quietly with your team while taking the test. A team captain should be designated to enter final answers into the boxes on the answer sheet. You must answer as many questions as you can to the best of your ability within the time allotted. Calculators are not permitted. You are not allowed to reference any notes or documents to complete the questions. 1. Suppose an ant walks in a straight line motion (on the surface of the Earth) around the circumference of the Earth at the equator. How many months would it take for this ant to complete its journey? 2. Estimate how many CD-R disks have information written onto them every year in the United States? 3. Beginning in the year 2006, the maximum allowable concentration of arsenic in drinking water will be 10 parts per billion. If someones drinking water has a concentration of 16 parts per billion, it is estimated that the person has a 1% chance of getting cancer from this exposure sometime during their lifetime. If 1% of U.S. drinking water supplies have 16 parts per billion arsenic concentration, how many people will eventually develop cancer in the U.S. from this exposure? 4. If 50% of the vehicles that run on gasoline worldwide were converted to electric vehicles, how many gallons of gasoline would this save each year worldwide? (This would be good for the environment if the electricity came from renewable sources.) 5. Suppose one out of every billion stars in the Universe has a planet which orbits this star and has intelligent life. How many planets have intelligent life on them in the Universe? 6. Estimate the number of people doing something on-line (i.e. interacting with the internet), at the present moment, worldwide. 7. How many corn plants are growing in Iowa in the month of July?

8. Hurricane Katrina and Rita from 2005 created an estimated 56 million cubic yards of debris. If a fleet of 100 dump trucks worked around the clock cleaning this debris up, how many days would it take? (Assume the landfill where the debris is taken is 10 miles away and each truck has the debris loaded using its own backhoe with a clamp.) 9. Suppose everyone in the United States was told to jump vertically into the air at precisely the same time. How many millimeters would this temporarily shift the Earths orbit? 10. How many electrons does the Earth contain? 11. Lets jump many years into the future. It has been decided that the entire state of Wisconsin will have a rain collecting roof built over it. It will stand 30 meters into the air. As the rain water is collected, it is channeled through turbines to generate electricity before it is discharged onto the Earths surface. Assuming that this giant roof does not effect Wisconsins average precipitation and that all the waters potential energy on the roof is converted into electricity, determine the average power generation in watts. 12. If we lined up, side-by-side, all the atoms within the average human adult in a straight line, how many meters would it stretch? 13. A snowstorm suddenly hits all of Wisconsin. After the snow stops falling, the average depth of the snow is 1 foot. How many snowflakes fell to create this amount of snow in Wisconsin? 14. Pushing down one key on a computer keyboard is called a keystroke. How many keystrokes have occurred on Earth during the time it took you to read this sentence? 15. A new world record was just accomplished. The record was for how many honey bees a person can cover themselves with at one time. The number of bees was measured by first measuring the weight of the person without bees and then with bees. And by estimating the weight of each bee one can determine the total number of bees. (They used an attractant to attract the bees onto the body.) If the person added 600 Newtons of bee weight onto themselves, determine the number of bees on the person. 16. The most distant objects ever measured are 1,000 mega parsecs away from the Earth. This corresponds to 3.26x109 light-years. How many meters away are these objects? (Dont consider how much further the object has moved since light began its journey.) 17. How many dollar bills are being carried on people in the United States when it is noon in the Central Standard Time zone? 18. The national debt for the United States is up to 8.2 trillion dollars. How many kilometers would this reach if this many dollars were laid end-to-end (in the direction of the bills longest dimension)?

19. An email chain letter will ask that you forward a message onto 5 other people. It entices the person to comply by offering good luck, answered prayers, restaurant coupons, etc, if they follow through. Suppose in one step, one person sends the chain letter to five people. Then in the second step, each of those five people send to another five people, and so on. If just 25 steps are taken in this chain, how many people will get the chain letter? (Assume you never run out of people.) 20. How many 17 year-old people are alive on the planet right now? 21. How much road salt (in kilograms) has been put onto Wisconsin roads during the past 10 years? 22. How many flowers are sold during Mothers Day each year in the United States? 23. At any given time (on average) there is 3,000 jetliners are in the air in the United States. How much fuel in liters is consumed each year by these jetliners? 24. How many diatomic oxygen molecules, in gaseous phase, exist on the Earth in the space between the surface and an altitude of 1 kilometer? 25. Suppose all people who died worldwide was buried on a plot of land that was 2 meters by 4 meters. At the current rate of worldwide deaths, how many years will it take to consume all of the available continental land with graves? (Antarctica is not available for graves.)