Okay, me and my friends have some pretty messed up conversations, and by the end of one of them we came up with this question:
How many fruit-loops could you fit (without like packing them in) into a dodge viper?
Now, I don’t know the approx size of a fruit-loop or the square inches of the interior of a dodge viper, but we had some wild guessing from people we asked. My first guess was abuot 15,000… but after thinking about it, I would go with something more around 50 to 75 thousand. One person we asked though it would be over a million, I however don’t think that it would be over 100,000.
Is there any way we could calculate this without actually having a dodge viper and 100,000 fruit-loops?
Well, find somebody that has a Viper and have them measure the passenger compartment to calculate the volume (or ask your friendly local Dodge dealer, I’m sure they’d be willing to ask around and find out the interior volume for you. Hell, it may even be in the brochure), then figure out the volume of a Froot Loop (we are talking about the toucan-advertised sugary breakfast cereal here, aren’t we?), and use the following equation (V=Volume, and X equals total number of Loops):
x= V[sub]Viper[/sub] / V[sub]Loop[/sub]
Alternately, figure out how many loops per cubic foot, then divide the volume of the car by that. Same result, with one more step.
Then subtract 10% or so to make up for less-than-optimal packing, and you’ve got a fair guess. Get a couple hundred entry forms and enter a range on either side of the number you arrived at, if this is for a contest. If it is, and you win, I expect a ride in your new car.
See this guy’s attempt for more details on the theory of calculating fillage of cars with odd things for contests.
That doesn’t quite work. Dividing the volumes only only works if there is perfect fill. However Froot Loops™ are toroidal, and therefore won’t pack perfectly. You’ll have to also work out what the packing ratio is in order to get a better approximation.
To provide some sort of answer to your question. Fill a one cubic foot container with fruit loops. Weigh this quantity of cereal with a scale. Count out two batches of 100 fruit loops each. Weigh these two groups and average the total. The more groups you sample, the better your final estimate will be. Figure out how many hundred fruit loops are in one cubic foot. Get the manufacturer’s specification for cubic feet of cabin space and do the multiplication.
Cool question! You can do some back-of-the-envelope calculations to get in the ballpark. I haven’t seen a Dodge Viper or eaten Fruit Loops in a while, but I think we can get close with the following calculations. The Dodge Viper, Dr. Matrix’s funny notwithstanding, can hold two people. Assume they’re fairly big people, say 100kg (220 lbs) each. People are mostly water (in fact, less dense than water) so we’re pretty safe by setting a lower limit on their volume as the equivalent volume of water. So that would be 200 liters or 200,000 cubic centimeters (1cc = 1g of water, 1 liter = 1000 cc.)
My guess is that a Fruit Loop is about 1/2 cc in volume but might be as much as 1 cc (I’m thinking 1 cm by 1cm by 1/2 cm). So easily, 200,000 - 400,000 in a Dodge Viper. Allowing for whatever vestigial space is in the back and under the seats and you can get up to 600,000.
This is, of course, the coupe, or the convertible with the top up.
Interior volume of a Dodge Viper: 56 cubic feet (including cargo room).
So how big is a Froot Loop? Lessee, about 1/2" in diameter, say, and 3/16" tall. I would think they should pack with an efficiency somewhere between square-grid packing and hex-packing, so the effective volume is between (0.5X0.5X0.187) = 0.0468 cu in and (0.250.25/tan606*0.187) = 0.0405 cu in. Let’s say the volume/Loop = 0.043 cu in. That means there’s 23.8 Loops per cu. in, and 41143 Loop/ cu. ft. And, finally, 2,304,000 Loops/Viper. I’ll note that this answer depend heavily on my assumed Loop dimensions (I eat toast in the morning, so I don’t have a Loop to measure); however, I would be surprised if the final calculation is off by more than a factor of two or three.
On preview: Finagle’s got about the same Loop volume as I do (0.043 cu in = 0.70 cc) but underestimates the Viper volume.
Hmm, interesting answer Zut. Math work looks impressive… However I’m still stunned that it could be over 2 million loops. Perhaps I was picturing a loop as being bigger than it actually is.
Well, I deliberately didn’t include the trunk because I decided that would be cheating. But according to your URL, the trunk is only 7 cubic feet! Which is impressive – $56K for a car and Fruit Loops are about the only thing you could fit in the trunk.
well, when buying a VIPER I doubt you care about trunk space… i think you’re more going for the fact that it has a v10 500hp engine… not to mention looking badass.
This link goes to a page where a guy did some rather extensive experimenting and calculation to figure out how many antenna balls would fit in a Chevy Blazer to try and win a contest. You might try his methodology, if you’re really serious (and can get access to a Dodge Viper), since he got pretty accurate numbers.
Yipes, and I see Gunslinger posted the same link I did…didn’t notice it since it was greyed out on my page (I’d visited it recently). Anyway, it’s a really good site for this sort of question.
This may or may not be relevant, but Mr. Cameron, a Dodge mechanic, tells me that the Viper has a removable roof, so you could conceivably get two different answers–one packed in with the roof on, and the other roof off, with the froot loops sort of heaped up. Doubtless there’s some way to calculate how they’d likely heap.
Unfortunately for the OP, that offer is from GM, the Viper is made by Dodge. (24 hours test drive not available on the Escalde, H2, and one other that escapes me now…)
