Second Guessing
— Approximating
A Quiz to Check Your Inner Clock
by Monny Sklov and Bob Spitzer
Suppose someone took on the gargantuan task of eating all
the food ever produced in the United States. How long
would it take? A matter of days? Obviously not. Years?
Doubtful, no matter how fast the person ate. Common sense
dictates that it would take centuries for even the world's
fastest eater to put away that much chow.
Questions like this and the 20 questions below will
propel you into the fourth dimension and measure your intuitive
perception of time, size, speed, and distance. Each question
is to be answered approximately, by choosing the most
suitable unit of time from among the following:
Seconds
Minutes
Hours
Days
Weeks
Months
Years
Decades
Centuries
Pencil and paper are forbidden. Instead, use intuition,
experience, and rough mental calculations to arrive at a
"guesstimate" of the correct answer.
Give yourself 5 to 10 seconds
for each. In all questions, assume nonstop activity with no
unspecified barriers (and in some questions, like the one
above, you'll need to suspend disbelief as well).
SCORING:
The lower your score, the better. For each correct
answer, your score is 0. For each incorrect answer, your
score is the number of units by which you vary from the
correct solution. (For example, if you answer "months" and the
correct response is "seconds," your score on that question
is 5, since you're five units away from the correct answer.)
Rate yourself as follows:
0-10 Years ahead of your time
11-20 "Hour" hero!
21-30 Nine days' wonder
31 and over Running late
1. With your rubber flippers on,
how long would it take to
swim around the equator?
2. You have just won a billion
dollars in the Super-Zorch
Megabucks Lottery. You
can't collect interest on your
money, but that's OK. You
still plan on spending $3,000
a day until the money runs
out. How long will it take until you have spent your last
two bits?
3. How long would it take you
to write the first and last
names of one million people?
4. You have a loud voice. In
fact, your voice is so loud
that when you yell, "hello"
from New York City, a friend
in Los Angeles can hear
you. After you yell, "hello,"
how long does it take before
your friend hears your voice?
5. What is the average life-span
of an ordinary housefly?
6. A cement company has just
built a sidewalk from your
front door to the sun. After
you've put on your hiking
boots, how long will it take
you to walk to the sun?
7. How long would it take you
to count all the beans in an
eight-ounce can of baked
beans?
8. One by one, how long would
it take you to pullout every
hair on the average human's
head? (Ouch.)
9. Congratulate yourself. You
are moving to Los Angeles
to become the Regal Hoo-hah
of the "I Love Los Angeles"
fan club. Your first
job is to award membership
medallions to each of Los
Angeles's 3 million people.
If you shake hands very
fast and you don't spend
much time chatting, you can
present one award every 10
seconds. How long will it
take you to adorn the new
members?
10. How long would it take
Samuel Slugg, a Parisian snail,
to climb the Eiffel Tower?
11. You're relaxing on the moon
and gazing toward Earth,
whence a friend is supposed
to send you a signal by special,
very powerful flashlight.
How long after your earth-bound
friend turns on his
flashlight will you be able to
see the light beam?
12. Every day for 18 years, you
take one foot of 8mm film of
your son Howie. Today is
Howie's 18th birthday, and
you're going to show the film
in its entirety. How long will
it take to run?
13. How long would it take to
walk across the United
States and back?
14. You are ordered to deliver a
secret document to the exalted
Chief Bel zap, who lives
just a few miles past Jupiter.
If you travel from Earth to
Jupiter at the speed of light,
how long will the chief have
to wait?
15.
You're sunning yourself on
the roof of a building that is
as tall as Mount Everest,
which is more than five miles
high. If you were to drop a
bottle of suntan lotion from
the top of this building, how
long would it take the bottle
to hit the street below?
16.
If you throw a ball straight
up into the air as high as
you can, how long will it
take before the ball hits the
ground?
17.
How long would it take you
to read all the books in the
Library of Congress?
18.
How long does it take for a
2 1/2 inch birthday candle to
burn itself out?
19.
You own a square mile of
land. If one-tenth inch of rain
falls on your land and you
catch all the water before it
hits the ground, how long
will it take you to drink all
the water?
20.
A fellow named Seymour is
bitten by a tropical bug. He
contracts a very rare disease
called the heebie-jeebies.
When Seymour has a spell
of the heebje-jeebies, his
only symptom is a slight
temperature.
However, it is the nature
of the disease that the 18th
spell is fatal! If the amount of
time between the first and
second spells is
one day,
and the amount of time between the second and third
is two days, and the amount
of time between the third
and fourth is four days, and
the amount of time between
each of the remaining spells
continues to double, how
long will Seymour live?