How many eyelashes fall off per year in the U.S.?

1.  Background Story

How many eyelashes fall of per year in the U.S.?  This question really intrigued me because its not something you normally think about. It will probably end up being a huge number, which is interesting because when you think of eyelashes you think of small little hairs. Plus people lose a lot of them every year, and in addition to that you need to include the whole U.S. population. That’s a lot of eyelashes!



2.  Ask Yourself This


How many eyelashes fall off 1 person every year?
What is the population of the U.S.?
Does makeup effect how many eyelashes fall off?
How many women are there in the U.S.?








3.  Helpful Hints:
- you lose about 750 eyelashes every year
- U.S. Population is about 313,933,954
- makeup makes you lose more eyelashes, about two more each day
- about 50% of the population are women



After looking around Harwood Union and students and teachers, I noted the number of girls and women who pwore makeup. I estimated that about half the girls and women at Harwood wore makeup, and being that this is Vermont and a lot more women in other places wear makeup, I concluded that about 2/3’s of the U.S.’s women population wears makeup.




4.  Construct a Formula:

   To find how many eyelashes are lost in the U.S. every year you need to find how many people there are. On average there are 313,933,954 people in the U.S. So first, we have to know how many eyelashes on person loses. On average you lose about 3 eyelashes everyday and about 750 in one year. But about 50% of the population are women and out of that about 2/3 of women wear makeup. Make up will make you lose 2 more eyelashes each day, so 2/3 of 50% of the population will be losing 1,500 eyelashes each every year. So with all of this information, you take half of the population multiply that times the number of eyelashes each person loses. Now you take the other half and divide it into thirds. 2/3 of 50% the population will lose 1,500 eyelashes each year so you multiply them together. Now you take the 1/3 that's left and multiplying that by the normal number of eyelashes lost per year, 750. After all of that math you add them all together and BAM, the answer to your question.







5.  Messy Math:


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6.  Answer:  This is where you can simplify your answer (round it off!) and provide context for your answer (put it into terms that someone else could understand).
About 314,000,000,000 eyelashes are lost in the U.S. every year. That's the same number of miles you would walk if you walked to the moon and back 130,000 times!