How many dry erase markers does it take to color every whiteboard in Americ

1.  Background Story:
I've often notice how we have a lot of whiteboards in harwood. I wanted to do my fermi project of how many whiteboards are all the schools in America. But then I thought that, that wasn’t enough. So I thought maybe i should do how many markers does it take to color all the whot boards in america. And I thought about it more and i thought that it would be a good fermi problem. My question is, how many dry erase markers does it take to color every whiteboard in America? I have a feeling that I can solve it and it won’t be extremely hard.





2.  Ask Yourself This:  On average how many whiteboards do schools have?
How many schools are there in America?
How many white boards are in harwood?





3.  Helpful Hints:
a.  There are around 73,720 schools in america. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080627121620AAAtYZo


b.  I colored the white board and found out that it took 7 markers to color an average size white board.
I figure out that on average we have 50 white boards per school



4.  Construct a Formula:

# of whiteboards on average for 1 school x # of schools in america = how many whiteboards in every school in america
how many whiteboards in every school in america x 7 markers per one whiteboard= total # of markers for every white board.





5.  Messy Math:

  7 markers                      50 white boards                 # of schools
----------------        x        --------------------------   x       ------------------------   =    ____ markers
1 white board                 1 school                                   1




6.  Answer:
50 (whiteboards on average) X 73,720 (schools in america) = 3,686,000 (how many whiteboards in all the schools in america) X 7 (markers to color 1 white board) = 25,802,000 (total # of markers)


It will take 25,802,000 markers to color on average 3,686,000 whiteboards