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?