Chapter 1, Problem 1.7CYU

Check Your Understanding Figure 1.4 says the mass of the atmosphere is ${10}^{1\text{9}}\text{ kg}$ . Assuming the density of the atmosphere is ${\text{1 kg/m}}^{\text{3}}$ , 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.”