Question

if a man is the earth, what is the bacteria? a house or a basketball?

Answer 1

Basketball

Answer 2

are you kidding?

Answer 3

Interesting question! I'll try to work it out here just for fun...

\[\LARGE{ {V_{Bacteria} \over V_{Man}}={{?}\over{V_{Earth}}}}\]
Started out with this simple proportion.
For the volume of a bacterial cell, I approximated using a 2 micron long cocci...V = 4/3pi(r^3) = 4/3pi microns^3.

For the volume of a man, I found the average density of a human to be 1.01g / cm^3 and the average mass of a man in the US to be 86.6 kg. So, the volume (M/D) comes out to be = 85700 cm^3.

Converting microns^3 over to cm^3, the volume of a bacterial cell becomes 4/3pi*10^-12 cm^3.

Okay- time to find the ratio! The number comes out to be...4.89*10^-17. Multiply that with the volume of the earth (1.08*10^27 cm^3) gives you 5.29*10^10 cm^3 or 53000m^3.

I'm pretty sure that's larger than both the house and the basketball! I likely may have made a mistake somewhere up there^^^^, but it's interesting to get a sense of how large the earth really is. Also, the numbers I used were pretty arbitrary; something to keep in mind.

Answer 4

ohhh i see. i used to do this kind of problems for physics a long time ago. proportions: we did it between an elephant and an ant.
sorry!

Answer 5

wow ! what an answer. i do appreciate it very much. thank you. now i know how to solve things like this. great !

Answer 6

:)