There is a common saying that the moon is made of cheese. I think that’s pretty silly. For this math problem, we will pretend something even sillier: The moon is pareve and made of matzah meal.
The thing is, most people don’t just want a matzah ball. They want it in a bowl filled with chicken soup. A moon-matzah ball could only fit inside a really big bowl.
Let’s estimate the amount of chicken soup filling a bowl like that. Then we’ll compare it to the water in the Earth’s oceans. Here is some information:
The moon’s diameter is approximately 3,475 km.
The diameter of the soup bowl is 3 times the moon’s diameter.
The radius of the soup bowl is half its diameter..
The formula for the amount of chicken soup in the soup bowl is:
(2/3) x 3.14 x radius x radius x radius
The amount of water in the Earth’s oceans is approximately 1,335,000,000 cubic kilometers.
Solution:
The moon’s diameter is approximately 3,475 km.
Therefore, the soup bowl has a diameter of 3 x 3,475, which is 10,425 km. The radius of the soup bowl is 10,425/2 = 5212.5 km. This makes the amount of chicken soup inside the bowl equal to:
(2/3) x 3.14 x 5212.5 x 5212.5 x 5212.5, which works out to about 296,000,000,000 cubic kilometers.That’s a huge amount! It’s over 200 times the amount of water in the Earth’s oceans.
Have a Chag Sameach.
Ari Blinder is a math educator living in Highland Park He is the owner of Math for the Masses, an innovative tutoring and consulting company. Please visit www.math4masses.com for fun activities and helpful worksheets. Ari can be reached at ari.m4m@gmail.com. Never think you are “not a math person.” You are very much one already, but no one has shown you how.
