Check Your Understanding Figure 1.4 says the mass of the atmosphere is 1019kg . Assuming the density of the atmosphere is 1kg/m3 , estimate the height of Earth’s atmosphere. Do you think your answer is an underestimate or an overestimate? Explain why. How many piano tuners are there in New York City? How many leaves are on that tree? If you are studying photosynthesis or thinking of writing a smartphone app tot piano tuners, then the answers to these questions might be of great interest to you. Otherwise, you probably couldn’t care less what the answers are. However, these are exactly the soils of estimation problems that people in various tech industries have been asking potential employees to evaluate their quantitative reasoning skills. If building physical intuition and evaluating quantitative claims do not seem like sufficient reasons tot you to practice estimation problems, how about the fact that being good at them just might land you a high-paying job? For practice estimating relative lengths, areas, and volumes, check out this PhET (https://openstaxcollege.org/l/21lengthgame) simulation, titled “Estimation.”

If you live in the United States, you probably know your height in feet and inches. In other countries, metric units are commonly used for measuring such quantities. First, find your height in inches. Then determine your height in a. centimetens and b. meters

When nonmetric units we used in the United Kingdom, a unit of mass called the pound-mass (lbm) was used, where 1 lbm = 0.4539 kg. (a) If there is an uncertainty of 0.0001 kg in the pound-mass unit, what is its percent uncertainty? (b) Based on that percent uncertainty, what mass in pound-mass has an uncertainty of 1 kg when converted to kilograms?

If the DNA strand in a molecule could be stretched out, it would have a length on the order of 2.0 m. What would this be in feet and inches?

CASE STUDY On planet Betatron, mass is measured in bloobits and length in bots. You are the Earth representative on the interplanetary commission for unit conversions and find that 1 kg = 0.23 bloobits and 1 m = 1.41 bots. Express the density of a raisin (2 103 kg/m3) in Betatron units.

The first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945, at the Trinity test site about 200 mi south of Los Alamos. In 1947, the U.S. government declassified a film reel of the explosion. From this film reel, British physicist G.I. Taylor was able to determine the rate at which the radius of the fireball from the blast grew. Using dimensional analysis, he was then able to deduce the amount of energy released in the explosion, which was a closely guarded secret at the time. Because of this, Taylor did not publish his results until 1950. This problem challenges you to recreate this famous calculation. (a) Using keen physical insight developed from years of experience, Taylor decided the radius rof the fireball should depend only on time since the explosion, t, the density of the air, , and the energy of the initial explosion, E. Thus, he made the educated guess that r=kEabtcfor some dimensionless constant kand some unknown exponents a,b, and c. Given that [E]=ML2T-2 , determine the values of the exponents necessary to make this equation dimensionally consistent. (Hint: Notice the equation implies that k=rEabtcand that [k]=1 ). (b) By analyzing data from high-energy conventional explosives, Taylor found the formula he derived seemed to be valid as long as the constant khad the value 1.03. From the film reel, he was able to determine many values of rand the corresponding values of t. For example, he found that after 25.0 ms, the fireball had a radius of 130.0 m. Use these values, along with an average air density of 1.25kg/m3 , to calculate the initial energy release of the Trinity detonation in joules (J). (Hint: To get energy in joules, you need to make sure all the numbers you substitute in are expressed in terms of SI base units.) (c) The energy released in large explosions is often cited in units of “tons of TNT” (abbreviated “t TNT”), where 1 t TNT is about 4.2 GJ. Convert yow answer to (b) into kilotons of TNT (that is, kt TNT). Compare your answer with the quick-and-duty estimate of 10 kt TNT made by physicist Enrico Fermi shortly after witnessing the explosion from what was thought to be a safe distance. (Reportedly, Fermi made his estimate by dropping some shredded bits of paper right before the remnants of the shock wave hit him and looked to see how far they were carried by it.)

Roughly how many heartbeats are there in a lifetime?

Find the order of magnitude of the number of table-tennis balls that would fit into a typical-size room (without being crushed). 18. (a) Compute the order of magnitude of the mass of a bath-

(a) A person's blood pressure is measured to be 1202 mm Hg. What is its percent uncertainty? (b) Assuming the same percent uncertainty, what is the uncertainty in a blood pressure measurement of 80 mm Hg?