_QUESTIONFORMAT_ r'\d+\.'
_ANSWERFORMAT_ STYLE_QUESTION_NUMBER

1. (5 points) In honor of me eating at Cracker Barrel for the first time in my life this year, what
is the annual revenue (in USD) of Cracker Barrel in 2022?

2. (5 points) We had to Google a ton of research to create this exam. How many Google
searches are done every day?

3. (5 points) As a Midwest local, one of my favorite pastimes is sitting in cornfields. . . doing
nothing. About how many pounds of corn are grown and harvested in Indiana each
year?

4. (5 points) Why do ice cubes always come as. . . cubes? Why aren’t there ice spheres? or ice
cylinders? If you froze all the freshwater (include all sources, not just surface lakes,
ponds, etc.) on Earth into an ice cube, what would the side length of the cube be
5. (5 points) In the wise words of Albus Dumbledore, “Fermi Questions is the best Scioly event!”
Directly after worldwide release, how many seconds did J.K. Rowling have to wait
until she sold enough copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to be able
to stack them to the International Space Station?

6. (5 points) One of my favorite songs is Bruno Mars’ Talking to the Moon. Unfortunately, sound
does not travel through space, so Bruno’s words never made it to the moon :(. Assuming
the sound does not decay, and assuming we use the speed of sound through air, How many
seconds would it take your voice to travel the equivalent distance from the Earth’s
surface to the moon?

7. (5 points) Do you ever see those funny graphs Apple presents to show how much better their
devices are than their competitors? It got me thinking about Apple’s new computer chips.
Intel 4004 was the first ever commercially produced microprocessor. How many
times more transistors are on the new Apple M2 chip, compared to the Intel 4004
chip?

8. (5 points) Did you know that capsaicinoids are the active chemical compound found in peppers
that make them spicy? How many times hotter is the hottest capsaicinoid compared
to the hottest jalapeno peppers, on the scoville scale?

9. (5 points) Sometimes, I spend more time looking for a show than actually watching a show on
Netflix. How many days would it take to watch all of Netflix (assume Netflix US)?

10. (5 points) Wow, that’s a lot of days! How many megabytes of data would it take to
stream all of Netflix (assume Netflix US) in HD?

11. (5 points) Speaking of streaming services, have you made your Spotify “playlist in a bottle”?
On average, how many hours would it take for you to listen to all of the songs
Spotify adds to its collection in a single day?

12. (5 points) Fermi Questions are usually solved by what people often call “back of a napkin”
calculations. If you used a BIC ballpoint pen to draw a continuous straight line, how
many paper napkins would you need to draw on until the pen ran out of ink? In
other words, if you used the pen to draw one single horizontal line on each napkin,
where the line is equal to the side length of the square napkin, how many napkins
could you draw on until the pen ran out of ink? Assume the napkin is NOT unfolded
(how a paper napkin looks in its packaging).

13. (5 points) Something I miss from high school is competing against my classmates in Kahoots.
College professors should use them more often! How many Kahoot sets have been created
since the inception of the site?

14. (5 points) The Wiki Game is where you try to jump from one Wikipedia page to another
by only using the hyperlinks on the pages. Across all Wikipedia articles, how many
hyperlinks are there to the “United States” Wikipedia page?

15. (5 points) One of the most popular drinks amongst my friends these days is bubble tea. Did
you know bubble tea originated in Taiwan? What is the global bubble tea market value,
in New Taiwan Dollars?


16. (5 points) The New York Federal Reserve is one the most important institutions for the U.S.
economy. How many Lydian stater gold coins (the first gold coin ever used for
currency in the world) would equal the amount of gold stored in the New York
Federal Reserve?

17. (5 points) A famous icon of NYC is its squadron of yellow taxi cabs. How many miles do
all of the taxi cabs drive in a day, cumulatively?

18. (5 points) You may have seen this one coming. It’s the classic interview question to test your
analytical skills! How many windows are in NYC? Don’t forget that all windows count:
homes, cars, boats, you name it.

19. (5 points) One of my favorite experiences in NYC has been celebrating 4th of July here. In
2022, how many shells were set off for “Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks” celebration?

20. (5 points) We couldn’t get through the NYC section without talking about Columbia! Re-
cently, Columbia has been under public scrutiny due to it giving inaccurate information to

U.S. News national university rankings. As such, Columbia’s ranking dropped to 18th in 2023,
compared to 2nd in 2022. If you multiplied Columbia University’s rankings in the
“U.S. News Rankings of best national universities” over all years from 1988 to
2023 (inclusive), what would your answer be?

21. (5 points) I wanted to ask this question about t-rexes but unfortunately I couldn’t find any
concrete data on them :(. How many genes does a fruit fly have?

22. (5 points) “Mexican Coke” is a special form of Coca Cola where all the sugar in it is purely real
cane sugar (i.e. sucrose). How many molecules of sugar are there in a 12 oz. Mexican
Coca Cola bottle?

23. (5 points) Did you know that a parsec is not a unit of time, but rather a unit of distance?
How many hours would it take the Saturn V rocket, traveling constantly at its top
speed, to finish Han Solo’s famous 12-parsec Kessel Run?

24. (5 points) In Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Tom Cruises’ character, Ethan Hunt, holds
onto the side of a plane as it takes off. Assuming that the plane took off at a constant
velocity of 200 mph, and that Ethan is holding the plane such that his body is
aligned with the wind (“diver position”), how many Newtons of force are exerted
on Ethan Hunt by air resistance?

25. (5 points) We take for granted that when we charge up our batteries, they don’t get heavier...
or do they? Assuming that an iPhone 14 has a 3000 mAh battery that is rated at
3.7 volts, how many more kilograms does an iPhone 14 weigh when fully charged,

compared to when its battery is completely empty, all else equal? Assume for sim-
plicity that all electrons in the battery have zero kinetic motion, regardless of the battery being

charged or not.

26. (5 points) We like to call this question the Power Tower. What is 3^3^3?

27. (5 points) We like to call this question the (Imagine "Power Tower" but upside down) .What is 0.2^0.2^0.2...?

28. (5 points) Interestingly, the largest prime number ever found was discovered in 2018. For the
past 4 years, nobody has cared enough to look for the next; and neither do we! Just tell us:
what is the ten millionth prime number?

29. (5 points) A tetromino is a geometric shape composed of four squares, connected orthogonally
(think Tetris pieces). How many distinct ways are there to tile a 2 × 100 board with
tetrominoes of any shape?

30. (5 points) A childhood card game I loved to play with my brother is “War.” You always
start your hand with half the cards in a standard 54-card deck. Assuming order does not
matter, what are the total unique hands you can start out with in “War”?

1. 9 
2. 10 
3. 10 
4. 5 
5. 5

6. 6
7. 7 
8. 6 
9. 3 
10. 8

11. 3 
12. 5 
13. 8 
14. 5 
15. 11

16. 9 
17. 6 
18. 8 
19. 4 
20. 31

21. 4 
22. 23 
23. 10 
24. 3 
25. -13

26. 13 
27. -1 
28. 8 
29. 20 
30. 15