Beatrix, as we drove to pick up the kids from school: Can we have fruit pops for after-school snack?
Me: I don’t think we have enough left for everyone.
Beatrix: We do! We do! We have billions.
Me: Billions of fruit pops would go to the moon and back! We don’t have billions.
Beatrix: Maybe we have 3.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So I did the math.
How many Dreyer’s Fruit Bars would it take to span the distance to the moon and back?
A Dreyer’s Fruit Bar is 6 inches from tip of the stick to the top of the pop. I measured using our Cost Cutter’s gel-filled fun ruler one of the kids got after a haircut.
I am all about laser-like precision.
Because the distance from the Earth to the moon changes (elliptical orbits are sneaky that way), we’ll use an average of 250,000 miles from our backyard, The Sea of Banality, to the Sea of Tranquility. I bet there’s no dog poop or Little Tikes coupes littering the Sea of Tranquility. No liquified sidewalk chalk because someone left it outside yesterday and it snowed last night. No non-functioning satellite dishes.
But our backyard has two plum trees in full blossom. The moon can’t compete with that, right?
The next calculation must determine how many inches are in 500,000 round-trip miles. 12 inches per foot. 5,280 feet per mile. I know that off the top of my head because I live in the Denver metro area, where everything is 5280-This and 5280-That. One would get the impression people around here are slightly proud of the whole Mile Above Sea Level thing.
There are 63,360 inches in 1 mile. I’m going to start a magazine about Denver stuff called 63,360.
500,000 X 63,360 = 31,680,000,000 inches from Sea to Sea and back to Sea.
Now, I’ll divide 31,680,000,000 inches by 6 inches to get the number of Beatrix’s preferred after-school snack she speculated we had in our freezer.
It would take 5,280,000,000 Dreyer’s Fruit Bars to span the distance to the moon and back. That’s almost enough for every person on the planet.
I call lime.