Guesstimation 2.0

Acknowledgments xi Preface xiii 1 How to Solve Problems 1 2 General Questions 11 2.1 Who unrolled the toilet paper? 13 2.2 Money height 17 2.3 Blotting out the Sun 19 2.4 Really extra-large popcorn 21 2.5 Building volume 25 2.6 Mass of money 29 2.7 A baseball in a glass of beer 33 2.8 Life on the phone 37 2.9 Money under the bridge 41 2.10 Monkeys and Shakespeare 45 2.11 The titans of siren 49 2.12 Airheads at the movies 53 2.13 Heavy cars and heavier people 55 2.14 Peeing in the pool 59 3 Recycling: What Really Matters? 63 3.1 Water bottles 67 3.2 99 bottles of beer on the wall ... 71 3.3 Can the aluminum 75 3.4 Paper or plastic? 79 3.5 Paper doesn't grow on trees! 83 3.6 The rain in Spain ... 87 3.7 Bottom feeders 91 3.8 You light up my life! 95 4 The Five Senses 101 4.1 Don't stare at the Sun 103 4.2 Men of vision 105 4.3 Light a single candle 109 4.4 Oh say can you see? 113 4.5 Bigger eyes 117 4.6 They're watching us! 121 4.7 Beam the energy down, Scotty! 125 4.8 Oh say can you hear? 131 4.9 Heavy loads 135 5 Energy and Work 139 5.1 Power up the stairs 143 5.2 Power workout 145 5.3 Water over the dam 149 5.4 A hard nut to crack 153 5.5 Mousetrap cars 155 5.6 Push hard 159 5.7 Pumping car tires 161 5.8 Pumping bike tires 165 5.9 Atomic bombs and confetti 169 6 Energy and Transportation 173 6.1 Gas-powered humans 177 6.2 Driving across country 181 6.3 Keep on trucking 185 6.4 Keep on biking 189 6.5 Keep on training 193 6.6 Keep on flying 197 6.7 To pee or not to pee 201 6.8 Solar-powered cars 205 6.9 Put a doughnut in your tank 209 6.10 Perk up your car 213 6.11 Don't slow down 217 6.12 Throwing tomatoes 219 7 Heavenly Bodies 223 7.1 Orbiting the Sun 227 7.2 Flying off the Earth 229 7.3 The rings of Earth 233 7.4 It is not in the stars to hold our destiny 237 7.5 Orbiting a neutron star 241 7.6 How high can we jump? 245 7.7 Collapsing Sun 249 7.8 Splitting the Moon 253 7.9 Splitting a smaller moon 257

Lawrence Weinstein is University Professor of Physics at Old Dominion University. He is the coauthor of Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin (Princeton).

Praise for Guesstimation: "[A] left-brain book that helps you approximate answers to the types of questions actually asked in some job interviews today. er Coy, BusinessWeek