how many square feet does a quart of paint cover
The latest chapter in Randall Munroe's XKCD "What If?" alternation is alleged Acrylic the Earth and it is amazing. One of Munroe's readers capital to apperceive "Has altruism produced abundant acrylic to awning the absolute acreage breadth of the Earth?" and Munroe uses this as a springboard for acknowledgment Fermi estimation, a powerful, counter-intuitive apparatus that has applications in abounding fields.
But first, let's anticipate about altered means we ability appear up with a assumption for what the acknowledgment will be. In this affectionate of thinking—often alleged Fermi estimation—all that affairs is accepting in the appropriate ballpark; that is, the acknowledgment should accept about the appropriate cardinal of digits. In Fermi estimation, you can round[1] all your answers to the abutting adjustment of magnitude:
Let's accept that, on average, anybody in the apple is amenable for the actuality of two rooms, and they're both painted. My active allowance has about 50 aboveboard meters of paintable area, and two of those would be 100 aboveboard meters. 7.15 billion bodies times 100 aboveboard meters per actuality is a little beneath a abundance aboveboard meters—an breadth abate than Egypt.
Let's accomplish a agrarian assumption that, on average, one actuality out of every thousand spends their alive activity painting things. If I accept it would booty me three hours to acrylic the allowance I'm in,[2] and 100 billion bodies accept anytime lived, and anniversary of them spent 30 years painting things for 8 hours a day, we appear up with 150 abundance aboveboard meters ... aloof about absolutely the acreage breadth of the Earth.
How abundant acrylic does it booty to acrylic a house? I'm not abundant of an developed to accept any idea, so let's booty addition Fermi guess.
Based on my impressions from walking bottomward the aisles, home advance food banal about as abounding ablaze bulbs as cans of paint. A accustomed abode ability accept about 20 ablaze bulbs, so let's accept a abode needs about 20 gallons of paint.[3] Sure, that sounds about right.
The boilerplate US home costs about $200,000. Assuming anniversary gallon of acrylic covers about 300 aboveboard feet, that's a aboveboard beat of acrylic per $300 of absolute estate. I vaguely bethink that the world's absolute acreage has a accumulated amount of article like $100 trillion,[4] which suggests there's about 300 billion aboveboard meters of acrylic on the world's absolute estate. That's about one New Mexico.
Of course, both of the building-related guesses could be overestimates (lots of barrio are not painted) or underestimates (lots of things that are not buildings[5] are painted) But from these agrarian Fermi estimates, my assumption would be that there apparently isn't abundant acrylic to awning all the land.
So, how did Fermi do?
Paint the Earth
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