UChicago Invitational 23-24
30
How many modern transistors are needed to line Earth’s circumference?
16
How many moles of carbon are in one Flamin’ Hot Cheeto?
-2
How many piano strings would the average piano tuner in Chicago tune per year?
5
How many femtoseconds is the duration of every Beethoven symphony combined?
19
How many IKEAs are there in the entire world?
2
Suppose you roll three 12-sided dice. How many ways are there for the product of each die to be even?
3
How many single crystals of salt would it take to completely cover the surface of a playing card?
16
If each tree on Earth was replaced by a grain of rice, how many servings of rice would it make?
9
How many hours would it take light to travel the length (from north to south) of Illinois?
-5
How many gallons of milk would it take to fill Lake Michigan?
15
How many times has Barbie been screened worldwide in theaters since its release?
6
In centimeters, how long is the standard distance between first and second base in Wrigley field?
3
How many parsecs are in a kilometer?
-14
How many dried prunes long (measured on their long axis) is a stretched out small intestine?
3
How many apples worth of apple juice would it take to fill up an 18-wheeler truck?
7
How many standard cans of beans would it take to fill up the volume of the moon?
22
Chicago-based FM radio station WHPK is headquartered on the UChicago campus! If I wait exactly a second, how many full wavelengths of the incoming radio wave have passed through me?
7
How many different species of beetle are there in the world?
5
If the mass of the Earth stayed at its current value, how small of a diameter, in millimeters, would I have to compress the Earth to in order for it to collapse under its own density and become a black hole?
1
The fastest baseball pitch ever thrown is around 100mph. How many times faster would it have to have been in order to reach the escape velocity of Earth?
2
How many orders does Amazon.com receive per day?
7
How many base pairs of DNA are there in one copy of the human genome?
9
California’s General Sherman sequoia is the largest tree by volume in the world. How many Rubik’s cubes would fit inside its trunk?
8
What is the highest frequency a human being can hear, in hertz?
4
How many unique ways can I arrange 8 different books on a shelf that holds 6?
4
How many hydrogen atoms are there in a liter of water?
26
How long has it been since the fall of the Roman empire, measured in units of the half-life of carbon-14?
-1
How many seconds would it take for a brick to fall freely from rest, neglecting all air resistance, from the top of the Burj Khalifa?
1
How many books are in UChicago’s Regenstein Library?
6
How many scholars associated with the University of Chicago have been awarded a Nobel prize?
2
