Saturday, February 18, 2012

Sometimes my friends make me do math

Could World's population fit within Nevada?

//Could you pack the world's population into nevada:
var nSurf_miles:Number = 110561;
var metersPerMile:Number = 609.344;
var nevadaSurfArea:Number = nSurf_miles * metersPerMile; //surface area of nevada in miles multiplied by meters per mile.
var nonPersonalSpace:Number = 0.3;    //0.3 meters is about 1FT. putting each person in a 1ftx1ft box.
var worldPop:Number = 6.995 * Math.pow(10,9); //(10^9);
trace("worldPop ==" + worldPop);
var linearSpace:Number = worldPop * nonPersonalSpace;
var surfArea:Number = Math.sqrt(linearSpace); //in meters squared.

trace("surfArea == " + surfArea);

if(surfArea <= nevadaSurfArea){
 trace("it could work");
}
UPDATE: According to one of my facebook programmer friends. My calculations are wrong. Here is his code.
local feet_per_mile = 5280
 
-- Surface area of Nevada, in square feet
local sqf_nevada = 110561 * feet_per_mile
 
-- According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the total population of the World,
-- projected to 02/19/12 at 12:00 UTC (EST+5) is
local pop_earth = 6995347552
print("If you tried to fit the entire population of the Earth into Nevada,")
print(string.format(
  "each person would have %.3f square inches of personal space!",
  (sqf_nevada/pop_earth)*12))

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