Estimations

This week's puzzler is about estimates. And it is a little difficult. This comes from a mathematics professor from a while back. Here we go.

Estimate the number you will get by multiplying the number of hairs on the heads of every single citizen of the United States by each other.

So, you take the number of hairs on one person, and then you multiply that by the number of hairs on the next person. And then you keep doing that, for all the people in the United States.

So there will be lots of numbers multiplied together. And this won't be exact, obviously.

So the puzzler is to estimate what that final number will be.

And here is a little hint in the form of a poem.

"While you do this calculation, please avoid a state of slumber and you'll find with fascination, It's got nothing to do at all with Avogadro's number."

Good luck.

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

Color of Cars

This one is a short, terse little puzzler from the archives of automotive history.

So, everyone knows this famous quote from Henry Ford. He said, "You can have any color of Ford you want, as long as it's black."

So the famous Henry Ford was known for being somewhat of a tightwad, among other things. He was also the father of the modern day assembly line. He did a lot in his time to help speed up production and make cars more widely available. But he was not known as a fun sort of guy. Took everything very seriously. Especially cars. He took cars very seriously because he was building cars for the whole country.

Henry Ford was known for selling cars, all of which were black. And the question very simply is, why did he choose black for the color of his cars?

And the obvious answer is that black was the cheapest paint, but that is not true. Black is not the cheapest paint.

So, what is the reason that Henry Ford chose black as the color of his cars?

Good luck.