How long will it take a panda to walk the length of Asia twice?

Fermi Method Organizer
Name: Lauryn Green

  1. Background Story:
Have you ever thought "How long would it take a panda to walk the length of Asia (there and back) twice?" Or "How long would it take a snail to go across the wall of china?" Or even "How many cats are sleeping in the U.S. right now?" Many of these thoughts go through my head as just random things and i end up just blowing them off. But not this time. This time I am going to actually put effort into figuring it out, make one less thing to have to think about. The problem I am going to check off is the first question above, "How long would it take a panda to walk the length of Asia twice (there and back)? I thought of this question because I think pandas are adorable, but they are also very big. And when I was coming up with questions I thought that I would do something that had to do with pandas. I know that they live in Asia so I just decided to do that. And that is how I came up with the question!


2.  Ask Yourself This:

Q1. "What is the length of Asia in miles?"
Q2. "How many seconds does a panda run on average?"
Q3. " How long can a panda run at top speed before slowing down?”


3. Helpful Hints:

-Asia is the world's most populous continent and is the largest too. It  is about 1,200 km in size.  (East to West)
(ask.com)

-They can run approximately 15 to 20 miles per hour. (ask.com)


      Q3. " How long can a panda run at it’s top speed before slowing down?”
I am estimating that a panda can run at top speed for about 10 seconds before slowing down because it takes a human around 6 seconds and considering how many miles a panda can run per hour the panda must be going full speed for more that 5 seconds.


4. Construct a Formula:

I know that a panda can run 15 miles per hour. So I will do 15 miles over 1 hour and then I will divide 15 miles by 60 minutes which will equal 0.25 miles. By then I will put 0.25 miles over 1 minute. Then I will multiply 0.25 miles and 1 minute by 2 which then will equal 0.5 miles over 2 minutes. We are trying to find how many minutes it will take a panda  to run 10 miles so then I would multiply 0.5 by x to get to 10 miles.
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5.  Messy Math:
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6.  Answer:
A panda can run approximately 1,500km (~ approximately the length of Asia) in 5,000 minutes! Keep in mind that I calculated this problem not including stopping for sleep, food, or water.
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