Our fan Lily J. asked, if everyone in the U.S. held hands, how long would that line be? A cool math fact can help figure this out: your arm span is about the same as your height! Let’s say for a mix of kids and adults, the average person can span 4 feet. So our 325 million Americans can stretch 1.3 billion feet, or 246,000 miles – just a little more than the distance from Earth to our Moon!
Wee ones: Check out your armspan! Lie on the floor and have a grown-up or friend place a book or shoe at your feet and the top of your head. Then turn sideways to stretch your arms across that distance. How closely does it match?
Little kids: If you’re 4 feet tall and your big cousin is 6 feet tall, how many feet taller is your cousin? Bonus: If you held hands side by side and stretched out, about how far across could the two of you reach together?
Big kids: If you and your friends are all 5 feet tall (and across), and you want to stretch a line across a 22-foot-wide ski slope, at least how many of you need to make the line? Bonus: In 1986, 6 1/2 million Americans made a line across the country in “Hands Across America.” At 4 feet each, how far could they have stretched in a perfect line?
Answers:
Wee ones: Your height and armspan will match pretty closely!
Little kids: 2 feet taller. Bonus: 10 feet.
Big kids: 5 people. 4 people would stretch only 5 x 4 = 20 feet, so you need 1 more friend. Bonus: 26 million feet, which is just shy of 5,000 miles!
