How big is the world’s biggest book? The Guinness World Record goes to “This the Prophet Muhammed,” a 16-foot tall, 13-foot wide giant with 429 pages. Also, the book that explains Brazil’s rules for paying taxes is ridiculous: it’s 6 feet 10 inches tall, and has more than 41,000 pages. But the heavyweight winner might be “The Pali Canon” (Buddhist scripture), whose 1,460 pages are actually 5-foot stone tablets. Tough to carry in your backpack!
Wee ones: Which is taller, the 5-foot stone “book” or the 6-foot paper book?
Little kids: If you can reach 6 feet high off the ground, how many feet taller is the 16-foot tall book? Bonus: If Richard Scarry’s “Biggest Word Book Ever” is 2 feet tall, how many would you have to stack end to end to match the 16-foot book?
Big kids: When you open that 13-footwide book, it becomes twice as wide! How far across the “table” would it stretch? Bonus: Brazil’s tax code weighs “several tons.” If it weighs 4 tons and you can carry 10 pounds on your back, how many kids like you would it take to carry the Brazil book? (Reminder if needed: A ton equals 2,000 pounds.)
Answers:
Wee ones: The 6-foot book.
Little kids: 10 feet taller. Bonus: 8 of them.
Big kids: 26 feet — as wide as a small house. Bonus: 800 kids, since the book weighs 8,000 pounds!
And thank you Genevieve for a real page-turner of a math problem!
