math question?

Question

if i were to make a big square out of all the people in the world, approximately how much space would they(we) occupy? is there a country of this area in which they(we) would fit? assume the people are standing shoulder to shoulder

Answer 1

The answer to this is really rather surprising. Just looking at the average person, they are approximately 20 inches wide and let's say 14 inches deep to be generous. That's only 1.944 square feet occupied on average by one human being. I know this is approximately correct because an average size casket is only 28 inches wide and 23 inches deep. If there are approximately 6.6 billion people in the world, then we multiply that figure by 1.944 square feet to get 12.833 billion square feet needed to pack everyone together. To find out how many square miles that is, first we simply square 5280 feet, since there are that many feet in a mile. When we do that, we find there are 27,878,400 square feet in a square mile. Then we divide that figure into the total area occupied by our subjects, i. e. 1.283 x 10^10 square feet. That's only 460.321 square miles, or about 21.455 miles on a side. All of these people could be packed about 13.5 times inside Texas' largest county, Brewster, which has an area of 6208 square miles. So, the geographic area which the human population occupies en masse is minuscule compared to the size of the world.

Answer 2

The population of the world is about 6.6 billion.
Suppose crammed together we each need about 30cm by 30cm, or about 0.1 square metres. This would be fairly squashed, though, but makes the maths a little simpler.
So we require about 660 million square metres, or about 660 square kilometres.

So Africa or the Pacific Ocean are WAY too big. 660 square kilometres is a very small country. Even if we allow each other double the space, this is till only 1320 square kilometres, ie perhaps a country of 40km by 33km.

Answer 3

I would have no doubt that everyone in the world could fit shoulder to shoulder in a moderate size country such as the U.S. but the practicallity of terrain is what would be the problem, buildings, trees, rocks, etc. If not those things then mountains, rivers, cliffs. Perhaps in a desert? Even then, there's still large sand slopes.

That would be quite the sight, though I'm sure people would bring their suicide bomb back packs, and white clothed hoods, and books of faith to convert everyone there, and what about that guy with TB? He'd screw everything up.

But interesting thought though.

Answer 4

to answer your first question i would have to go out and get an estimate of how wide each and every person is to figure the size of the square needed. but taking my width of my body and multiplying by the populace you would get a square that had each side being approximately 907,806km in length that being you standing side by side no one in the middle.

A country the size to fit everyone in.

If we would stick each and every person into Russia they could take up 257cm squared each which should be more than enough for everyone to feel crowded all the time.

If we stick them all into the united states they each could take up 142.78cm squared each which should be plenty for everyone in the world to fit in.

Canada would have just a little bit more space than the us for each person.

Answer 5

as of right now, the population of the world is 6,602,224,175.

Given that the average shoulder width of a person is 16 to 26 inches (or 21 inches.) and average breadth of a person is about 12 inches.

so a 21 x 12 = 252 square inches. 0.162 580 32 square meters

0.162 580 32 x 6602224175 = 1073391719.083236 square meters,

or 1,073.392 squareKM

Bolivia is 1,098,580 sqrKM, so that's about it.

Answer 6

World Population Information

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Population Clocks
U.S. 302,084,917
World 6,601,561,081
11:12 GMT (EST+5) Jun 14, 2007

This is an estimate of the US government of the population of the world as of 11:12 GMT Jun 14, 2007.

If we assume that one person can be put in a 1 by 2 ft box, we need an area of 2 x 6,601,561,081 or 13,230,122,162 square feet
Find a country with this land area.

Answer 7

Let us say x is for all the people in the world regardless of the physical status. s is for the space.

F is for Fat people and T is for Thin people:
Fat people are twice to occupy the land than thin people.

My Solution:

probability space: s={FFF, FFT, FTF, FTT, TFF, TFT, TTF, TTT}
x = FFF, FFT, FTF, FTT, TFF, TFT, TTF, TTT

*Whatever statistics shown, it depends whether there are more fat people than thin people or more thin people than fat people or equal.

Since approximately shown. Let us say that there are more thin people than fat people but not all.

x = FTT, TFT, TTF

Therefore if many people are thin, we are only occupying 1/3 of land mass.

R = 2F + 1T
R = 2P + 1P
P = 2 + 1
P = 3

For Fat people: 2/3
For thin people: 1/3

*China or Africa or Russia would be my best bet if more people are thin than fat.

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Answer 8

i think it is impossible to answer this question.
how many people are in the world. Some are really fat, they will occupy more space. Not enough info.

Answer 9

maybe africa but i dont know. i think we could occupy the whole Pacific ocean its the biggest body of water