Help! Fermi Questions needed.

[be_well_lowell]

I turn to the social networks for help as I have procrastinated too long before starting to write the quiz for the Rhode Island Science Olympiad event I will be running on Saturday afternoon. I am running the Fermi Questions event, which I have done before (and bored the ears off of some of you in the process

Comments

[dlevey]

Light travels at how many miles per hour?
What is the temp of the surface of the sun (in degrees Celcius)?
The first atom bomb released energy equivalent to how many pounds of TNT?

[be_well_lowell]

Not bad, although I think my instinct would be to give a few more hints.

Also, I'm thinking that maybe I should have limited the scope of this LJ entry.

[be_well_lowell]

But fixing those worries will take me less than half an hour, so I'm thoroughly grateful.

[be_well_lowell]

In past years, I've tried to start from a theme, so I could provide a small number of key constants and let the logic spread from there.

I don't think I've left myself enough time to think it through that far, even though right now I don't have, you know, an actual day job to siphon my time away from this important stuff.

[be_well_lowell]

I converted the Prudential Tower into the hill whose peak is the highest point in Rhode Island. And gave the height-above-terrain of the hill. Most of the teams got it either full or 60% credit, but success at this question did not correlate well with overall score. I'd call that a major success of a question.

[be_well_lowell]

You've got exactly the right idea. If I run the same event next year, I'll try to rope you into helping.

[be_well_lowell]

And -- the question about whether stuff can be googled is an excellent one. The answer is complicated, and somewhat influenced by my own preferences in running the event. The teams aren't supposed to have any access to the Internet during the event, so in theory that shouldn't be an issue. However, I prefer not to need to keep to close an eye on what gadgets they have in their laps (teenagers don't have watches, so clamping down on having cell phones out would be more invasive than I'd like to get), so I try to make sure that the answers aren't easily "googleable

[dlevey]

Ooh - how about: how much does all living humanity weigh?

[be_well_lowell]

The ants part would be too hard...