-cvj

1. I am not a morning person
2. ok Human DNA is 8 feet long, and has around 600 MB of information, which would be 300 million base pairs. A base pair is what? 4 or 5 atoms ‘tall’, tops. I’ll say 1.2 billion atoms in 8 feet. 150 million per foot. 5 million per cm. 500 million per meter, so.. 2 nanometers?

3. 8 car hours.

4. 8 light minutes, or 93 million miles. (I could tell you that asleep)
light goes 11.8 inches per nanosecond, so that would be about 48 billion feet.

or to alpha centauri: 4 light years, which is about a parsec (right?)

5. Ok, light can go around the earth 7 times in a second, and there are 24 main time zones. so that’s 148 time zones per second. The US covers 4 time zones, so that’s 1/37th of a light second so .027 light seconds
Assume 5 feet per person, that’s 5 light nanoseconds. We need to cover 27,000,000. 200K people would cover 1 mill. so.. 5.4 million people.

I suggest offering pizza and free music downloads.

… Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!

(Why, yes… I am a product of American public television! ^_^)

p.s. I could only answer the second one, but I think I did pretty well: ~6 hours * ~50 mph = ~300 miles. The actual distance from Detroit to New York is 650 miles — ­close enough for astrophysics!

FOREST GUMP

The day finally arrived; Forrest Gump dies, and goes to Heaven. He is at the
Pearly Gates, met by St. Peter himself. However, the gates are closed as
Forrest approaches the Gatekeeper.

St. Peter said, “Well, Forrest, it is certainly good to see you. We have
heard a lot about you. I must tell you, though, that the place is filling
up fast, and we have been administering an entrance examination for
everyone. The test is short, but you have to pass it before you can get into Heaven.”

Forrest responds, “It shor is good to be here, St. Peter, sir. But nobody
ever told me about any entrance exam. I shor hope that the Test ain’t too
hard; life was a big enough test, as it was.”

St. Peter continued to say, “Yes, I know, Forrest,
but the test is only three questions. First: What two days of the week,
begins with the letter T? Second: How many seconds are there in a
year? Third: What is God’s first name?”

Forrest leaves to think the questions over. He returns the next day and
sees St. Peter, who waved him up, and said, “Now that you have had a
chance to think the questions over, tell me your answers.”

Forrest replied, “Well, the first one-which two days in the week begins
with the letter “T”? Shucks, that one is easy. That would be Today and
Tomorrow.”

The Saint’s eyes opened wide, and he exclaimed,
“Forrest, that is not what I was thinking, but you do have a point, and I
guess I did not specify so I will give you credit for that answer. How about
the next one?” asked St. Peter. “How many seconds in a year?

Now that one is harder,” replied Forrest, but I thunk, and thunk, about
that and I guess the only answer can be twelve”

Astounded, St. Peter said, “Twelve? Twelve? Forrest, how in Heaven’s
name, could you come up with twelve seconds in a year?”

Forrest replied, “Shucks, there is got to be twelve:
January 2nd, February 2nd, March 2nd. ! ..”

“Hold it,” interrupts St. Peter. “I see where you are going with this,and
I see your point though that was not quite what I had in mind…..but I will
have to give you credit for that one, too. Let us go on with the third and
final question. Can you tell me God’s first name”?

“Sure”, Forrest replied, “its Andy.”

Andy?” exclaimed an exasperated and frustrated St. Peter. “Ok, I can
understand how you came up with your answers to my first two questions,but just
how in the world did you come up with the name Andy as the first name of God?”

“Shucks, that was the easiest one of all,” Forrest replied. “I learnt it from the song.
“ANDY WALKS WITH ME, ANDY TALKS WITH ME, ANDY TELLS ME I AM HIS OWN. . ”

St. Peter opened the Pearly Gates and said: “Run, Forrest, run!”

Give me a sense of humor, Lord. Give me the ability to understand a clean
joke, to get some humor out of life and to pass it on to my friends.`

Years ago I taught a section to get biology types interested in fermi calculations for their speciality. Most of the class was homebrew, but I based it on John Harte’s excellent “Consider a Spherical Cow”

Questions included estimate the speed of a snail in atomic radii per millisecond and stuff like that…

I love the 7.9 Lightminutes answer! Very creative! I guess the ultimate answer for that would be 1AU then.

That would be great, except that the computer allows me to log everything that they respond, to several questions per lecture, and use it later to generate useful data about participation, etc…also alllows for automatically generating and presenting histograms of the responses that they can all see….and it can feed back in interesting ways to their answers if you re-explain and ask them to answer the question a second time around.

I do like the idea of using coloured cards though…I might well use that for some other thing….

Thanks!

-cvj

jd

(*) with the exception of the one kid who’s red/green color blind.