Enough snow for 250,000 snowballs each – Vorderman
Enough snow fell in Britain today for everyone in the country to make a quarter of a million snowballs each, Bristol-based maths whizz Carol Vorderman said today.
The former Countdown presenter made the complex calculation as she was unveiled as the head of a new Tory taskforce to improve maths education.
Ms Vorderman baffled her audience with a set of sums, includingd the astonishing figure for the amount of snow which hit the country today: 3,840 billion kilograms.
Divided among the entire population, that would be enough for 251,800 snowballs per person.
The former presenter used up some of her quota earlier in a fight with Conservative Party leader David Cameron as they posed for pictures to launch the taskforce.
They had originally been due to visit a school to unveil the proposals but it was closed due to the weather so the event was switched to the party's London HQ.
She said: "David and I threw snowballs at each other this morning but we did not get anywhere near that number.
"So you have got to throw about a quarter of a million snowballs each before it melts."
The sums supremo explained that her figure was based on multiplying a 10 centimetre average fall by the UK’s area of 240 billion square metres – a massive 24 billion cubic metres.
Scrawling the vast numbers on a board in the style of a teacher, she said that with snow weighing in at 160 kilograms per cubic metre, that meant today’s fall tipped the scales at 3,840 billion kilos.
"Any ideas? Come on,.." she moaned as the increasingly-befuddled adult audience failed to take a guess at the result of the next sum. "If I was in school today, that’s the sort of thing I would be giving the children."
Dividing that into four-handful-sized 250g balls and then between the UK’s 61 million inhabitants came to 251,800 – the amount of ammunition available for each, she concluded.
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