Background Story:
Writing long essays with a pencil is a pain. The led breaks and your eraser wears down. It always has to be as sharp as it can be, but if you make it too sharp, to tip snaps and you have to sharpen it again! Then, when you wipe away the eraser pieces you end up smearing your precious writing all over the paper. Yes, pencils can wear down surprisingly quickly, when you have to use them for a big project. Just imagine how much work it would take to draw a line around the world. With golf pencils. How many of those tiny pencils would it take to accomplish such a huge line?
Ask Yourself This:
1. How much led is in a golf pencil?
2. What is the circumference of the Earth?
3. What fraction of all of the led in a golf pencil does it take to draw a line one meter long?
Helpful Hints:
Earth’s circumference: 40,075 kilometers
Average golf pencil length: 9 centimeters
One meter line takes 1/10 cm led (I drew 10 10-cm lines with golf pencil). Which equals 1/900 of all of the led in a golf pencil.
Formula:
First, I’ll need to find how many golf pencils it takes to draw a line that is one kilometer long so I’ll multiply that number by how many meters are in a kilometer. Next, I multiply my current product by the measure of Earth’s circumference in kilometers. This will get me the number of golf pencils it takes to draw a line around the world.
golf pencil x meters x kilometers = golf pencils
meter km Earth’s circumference Earth’s circumference
Messy Math:
1/900 golf pencil x 1,000 meters x 40,075 (4.01 x 10^4) km = 44,527 7/9 golf pencils
1 meter 1 kilometer Earth’s circumference Earth’s circumference
1,000 ÷ 900 = 1 1/9 golf pencils/kilometer
1 1/9 x 40,075 = 44,527 7/9 golf pencils/Earth’s circumference
You need 44,527.8 golf pencils to draw a line around the world. With that many golf pencils, you can write a 2,476,544.5 page essay!
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