Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2021

DOI

10.1119/10.0006501

Publication Title

The Physics Teacher

Volume

59

Issue

7

Pages

A583-A583

Abstract

[Introduction] How much would sea levels rise if everyone jumped in the ocean? (Thanks to Bob Friedhoffer for suggesting the problem.)

To estimate this, we need to know the number of people, the average volume of a person, and the area of the oceans. This is the kind of estimation problem where the inputs are relatively well known, and we are calculating the answer to see its order of magnitude.

There are about 7 X 10⁹ people in the world. If each person has a mass of 100 kg (in round numbers), then they each have a volume of 100 L = 0.1 m³ (since human density is very close to that of water). Thus our total volume is about...

Rights

© 2021 AIP Publishing LLC. 

This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in 

Weinstein, L. (2021). Solutions for Fermi Questions, October 2021: Rising water level; Popping many pimples. The Physics Teacher, 59(7), A583-A583. 

and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1119/10.0006501

Original Publication Citation

Weinstein, L. (2021). Solutions for Fermi Questions, October 2021: Rising water level; Popping many pimples. The Physics Teacher, 59(7), A583-A583. https://doi.org/10.1119/10.0006501

ORCID

0000-0001-5416-2900 (Weinstein)

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