QUESTION: Imagining the old expression "If I had all the money in the world, I would..." were taken literally, how much would you have? What might you buy?
ANSWER: First, you need to define what you mean by "money," says Fordham University economist Derrick Reagle. You might mean currency, or the kind of money you can put in a big pile and jump into. Most products aren't bought with this kind of money, though. Checks, credit cards, and debit cards are fast outpacing the use of cash money. Add to this the multiplier effect whereby currency put in the bank can be reused by the bank making loans, and the amount of physical currency needed to sustain the economy dwindles.
In the U.S., cash money accounts for roughly $550 billion. Cash plus checking accounts (referred to as M1) equals about $1.5 trillion, and cash plus checking and savings (M2) is over $6 trillion. Total goods and services sold, however, are over $10 trillion. "So maybe instead of asking for all the money in the world you should ask for all the stuff, or to be king or emperor or something."
Now, to the world total: M1 here is roughly $6 trillion. The U.S. ratio between currency and M1 is about 1:3, smaller ratios for countries with less developed financial systems. Assuming a worldwide multiplier of 2, that's about $3 trillion worth of currency--or some 30 million S-class Mercedes, says Reagle. Total goods and services is over $31 trillion worth. Therefore you'd be able to buy only 1/10th worldwide production. "Even less if you needed some money left over to buy a place in which to put it."
QUESTION: Just how loud do the cheering, jeering fans get at a pro football game? a) It's like being front row at a Kiss concert b) It's a tempest in a teacup c) The noise is psychologically intimidating as well as physically challenging d) The sound stays pretty well contained within the stadium, and not much out beyond.
ANSWER: Check all of the above. The loudest crowd ever recorded at a game, according to the Royal Association for Deaf People(!), was in 2000 in Denver, an undomed stadium, says Timothy Gay, Ph.D., in "Football Physics." It registered 128.7 dB (decibels), beyond the threshold of pain for most people and comparable to 120 dB for a rock concert.
Imagine the Bronco fans could have kept this up for four full quarters, or four hours of nonstop yelling at an energy flux of 0.5 pound-force feet per second per square foot, almost a trillion times more intense than the sound of normal breathing. Still, if you put a teacup of water at midfield, the sonic energy would raise the water temperature less than 3 degrees F (tempest in a teacup). What this shows is "the incredible sensitivity of the human ear."
As pure energy the sound may not be much, but hearing 30,000 screaming hostile fans facing you in the end zone could put anybody off his game. Plus when the quarterback looks down the line at the receiver and audibles, he might as well be yelling into a jet engine. Nevertheless, says Gay, even at this volume, sound dropoff is so steep that by about half a mile from the stadium, crowd noise will be down to 80 dB, like traffic noise on a busy street.
QUESTION: If money is your motive, in which nation (currency) would you want to be a millionaire (1,000,000 or more)?
ANSWER: Clearly something like the Japanese yen--1 yen equals about $0.01US--would be bad, says University of California-San Diego economist Richard Carson. A yen millionaire would have about $10,000US, so forget buying that sporty new car. The Turkish lira would be worse--1 lira is about $0.0000007US, so a million of these would be only $.70US.
Only a handful of currencies at this writing are worth more per unit than the US dollar: the Jordanian dinar at $1.41, the British pound at $1.67, and the Cyprus pound at $1.96. "You would also rather be a millionaire in Euros, the new multi-nation European currency: 1 Euro = $1.15US."
For a universal currency converter, see www.xe.com.
QUESTION: What is it about the frigid, barren Antarctic that has so many meteorites landing there?
ANSWER: In fact they fall about equally everywhere on Earth. It's just that the typical black-fusion meteorite crust stands out more against barren ice and snow, so tens of thousands of specimens have been found there, says the University of Pittsburgh's William Cassidy in "Meteorites, Ice and Antarctica." Also, without cars or people to disturb them, meteorites accumulate there in great numbers, often following ice "flows" into sample-rich areas.
Antarctica is meteorite hunter's heaven!
But a second heaven is certain sandy desert regions, the Sahara and others, where for similar reasons more and more meteoritists have gone a-hunting in recent years.
In general, most meteorites are fragments of asteroids, "leftovers" of planet formation, so scientists can learn about the origin of the Earth, says University of Hawaii astronomer Joshua Barnes. A few are from the Moon or Mars, blasted into space by giant impacts on those worlds. Not just stony, a small fraction are iron with nickel mixed in. Rather rare are the carbonaceous meteorites, representing the oldest and best-preserved of the early Solar System.
BTW, what's a "meteoroid" in the high heavens becomes a fiery "meteor" ("shooting star" or "falling star") amid the frictions of Earth's atmosphere and finally a "meteorite" at ground level if it gets this far.
