Every once in a while, situations come up that make me think that it would be interesting to figure out what math someone else did to come up with a particular statement. I plan to share them here as they come up. Maybe some of you would like to pass these on to your students and see what they do with them. If you do, post a comment back here!
Today’s theme is candy corn. On the back of the Brach’s Candy Corn bag is this “fun fact”:
Each year Americans consume enough Brach*s Candy Corn that if laid end-to-end, would circle the earth 4.25 times….WOW!
So what’s up with that?
I wonder if we could reverse engineer it, and figure out how many candy corns Americans consumed. And how off we’d be. Dan Meyers is probably already on the phone to Brach’s trying to get their data!
Or how many candy corns does that equal per person (average)? I know I am out on that one…I do not like candy corn.
I wonder who at Brachs has the job to figure out the measure of candy corn from end to end, how many candy corn equal a mile and how many times it would circle the earth. My students will love this problem but now I need to hunt down a leftover bag of candy corn…….perhaps I should be searching for fun facts on candy canes………..
Your post was made on my birthday. If I had known I would have bought some candy corn and played the lottery that day. That would have definitely increased my chances of winning. Right?
PS. You should blog more. :-)
Perhaps they just took the average length of a candy corn, multiplied that by the total number of candy corns sold per year and then divided the resulting number by the distance around the world. The more interesting part is how they figure out whether its Americans or non-Americans who are consuming it.