Estimating the amount of ping pong balls it would take to fill a classroom.?

Question

Estimate how many ping-pong balls it would take to fill your classroom (assuming all doors and windows are closed.) Make an guess on the size of the classroom.

Answer 1

for this you need to find the dimensions of a ping pong ball i don't have one atm so i can

you also have to remember that ping pong balls don't stack on top of the other uniformly which gets into a big complicated math formula

and then just the size of the room

Answer 2

How big room is (for example 50' by 50' by 10'). What is volume of ping pong ball. Diameter is about 2" and it's a sphere so about 2" by 2" by 2". Now if floor was 50 feet by 50 feet, then it would fit 150 rows and 150 columns of balls, so that's 22500 balls on 2-D level. And you can fit 30 balls vertically so 30 times 22500 is 675,000. So about 675,000 balls in a room that's 50' by 50' by 10'.

Answer 3

Take a look at the following web site:

http://www.stetson.edu/~efriedma/cirinsq...

It will give you the packing efficiency in 2-D, then you can multiply by the ratio of the room height to ping pong ball diameter ratio to determine the # of balls in the total room volume.