there are about 100,000 (= 50 × 2500) friends of friends of friends.

Continue in this way: at

the next level, 5,000,000; at the next, 250,000,000; at the next, 10,000,000,000. But this last
number is the order of the world’s population. So, it is likely that the police chief is a friend of
a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend.

4. People eat carbon, combine it with the oxygen they inhale, and exhale the resulting
carbon dioxide; while trees absorb the carbon dioxide, extract the carbon to form wood, and
release the oxygen. A person eats perhaps a pound of carbon per day (i.e., this is about how
much your day’s food, if dried out, would weigh). So, we shall need enough trees, for each
person, so that those trees collectively gain about a pound of wood per day. Now imagine,
say, a 20-year old tree that has been chopped down. It would take maybe ten people to lift it,
and so it weights around 1000 lbs (at 100 pounds lifted per person). Thus, a tree gains maybe
50 (= 1000/20) pounds a year, or 1/7 (= 50/365) pounds a day. So, 7 or so trees per person
should suffice.

Problem Set 1 — Comments

Please try to write your solutions carefully, using well-composed, complete sentences. (It
is amazing how much you can improve your understanding of a subject (not only physics!)
merely by writing clearly about it.) And if your handwriting is bad, it would help the teaching
assistants a great deal if you would type your solutions.
The class as a whole seems to have a pretty good general idea how to do these order-of-
magnitude problems. That’s great. I predict that you’ll find this skill extremely useful in the
future.
The question: “How long does it take to drive from Hyde Park to the Loop?” The answers:
i) 26.14932 minutes, ii) about 1500 seconds, iii) about 13,000 years, iv) “Well, let’s see. Starting
from the moment you decide to make the trip, there is a 0.1 sec reaction time before your foot
begins to descend on the gas pedal; and then · · ·.” The morals: i) Don’t write your answer in a
way that suggests that it is more accurate than it is. ii) Give your answer in convenient units.
iii) Check that your answer is reasonable. iv) Don’t include effects that have an insignificant
impact on your answer. It is important, when making order-of-magnitude estimates, to explain
where your numbers come from. Thus, if you introduce a number that is simply an out-of-the-
air estimate, say so. If it is computed from other numbers already in evidence, indicate how it
arises. (Note, in this connection, the style of the solution sheet.)
As a general strategy, it is preferable to avoid large numbers if you can, for in this way
you minimize the chances of making an arithmetic error. Thus, for example, for the problem
of comparing Chicago water-use with evaporation from Lake Michigan, we first allocated the
surface area of the Lake to the residents of Chicago. In this way we eliminated the two large
numbers — total surface area and total number of Chicago residents — early, and thus avoided
further manipulation of them. Furthermore, if one of your estimates is more questionable than
the others (and usually there is one), it is better to make the questionable one last. Often
you discover, by the time you get to that point, that only a very rough estimate is necessary.
Thus, returning to the water usage/evaporation problem, we arranged the argument so that
the estimated water usage per person (our roughest estimate) is made at the very end.
I urge you to get in the habit of first making your order-of-magnitude estimate in rough
form. Then, in the transition to final form, you can look for shortcuts, eliminate unnecessary
steps, etc.