Monday, October 28, 2013

How many hockey puck fit in the sun?

My fermi question is how many hockey pucks fit in the sun? I chose this question because I love and play hockey. Also it interests me, so what better way to be interested in my question then to base it off from my favorite thing. At first my question was how many hockey pucks fit in a hockey net but then Mr. Wagner said it should not be answerable by looking it up on google so I thought bigger and the biggest thing that came to my mind was the sun.

​Some questions I asked myself to help me figure out my fermi question were, what is the volume of the sun? What is the the height, length, and width of a hockey puck? How do to convert sq. kilometers into inches or vise versa? How many feet are in a kilometer?
​Then I did some research online,  to come up with some hints that might help me come up with how many hockey pucks fit in the sun. http://www.smartconversion.com/otherInfo/Volume_of_planets_and_the_Sun.aspx

Some things we should know is:
​1.The total volume of the sun is 1.4 x 10^27
​2. 1 cubic kilometer =  3.53146667 × 10^10 cubic feet
​3.  3.53146667 x 10^10 cubic feet = 35314666700 cubic feet.
​4. I took some measurement and estimated that the volume of a hockey puck is 5 cubic inches.
​5 cu in = the volume of a puck

​Then I came up with a worded formula on how I am going to solve my problem
​Step one is to find the volume of the sun.
​Step two is to convert the suns volume in km into cubic feet.
Step three is to do the math with the pucks cu ins

​After that this is where I did my math calculation and estimation, then I came up with my answer here.
​1.4 x 10^27 = 14000000000000000000000000000 km cubed
​1km =  35314666700 cu ft

​ 5 in                X     1 cu ft
​1 puck           X    1728 cu in
​1728 cu in divided by 5 cu in = 345.6 pucks 
​345.6 pucks x  35314666700 = 1.2204749 x 10^13 cu ft = 12204749000000 cu ft
​ 345.6 pucks x  12204749000000 cu ft = 4.2179613 x10^15 pucks/ cu ft = 4217961300000000 pucks/ cu ft  ​    
     11943.936 cu km x 421796130000000 pucks = 5.037906 x 10^18 = 5037906000000000000
​And came up with my answer which was 5.905146 x 10^47 hockey pucks that fit in the sun. And written out that is 590514600000000000000000000000000000000000000000 hockey pucks that fit in the sun.

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