Spaghetti and meatballs are perfect together. But is the world’s biggest meatball bigger than the world’s longest piece of pasta? By length, the pasta won by a mile, in fact by more than 2 miles: the longest pasta ever made stretched 12,388 feet! The world’s biggest meatball was only 4 feet wide. That doesn’t sound so big, but that meatball weighed 1,110 pounds!
Wee ones: What shape is a meatball?
Little kids: If you serve yourself 1 world-record meatball and 7 normal-sized ones, how many meatballs do you have? Bonus: If 3 of those roll off your plate, how many meatballs are left?
Big kids: If for dinner you ate just 1/10 of the 1,110-pound meatball, would your meal weigh more or less than you? Bonus: If you and your car weigh 2,000 pounds total, and a bridge can hold only 4,000 pounds of weight, can you drive the 1,110-pound meatball across it?
The sky’s the limit: If you have 1,000-pound meatballs and 30-pound pasta noodles, how many of each do you have if your whole meal weighs 3,200 pounds?
Answers:
Wee ones: A circle from the side view, or in 3D, a “sphere.”
Little kids: 8 meatballs. Bonus: 5 meatballs.
Big kids: Different for everyone…see if you weigh more or less than 111 pounds! Bonus: Yes! All together you’ll weigh 3,110 pounds, which is less than 4,000.
The sky’s the limit: You need a multiple of 1,000 and a perfect multiple of 30. So you can’t have 3 meatballs, because the noodles can’t add up to 200. In the same way you can’t have 1 meatball, because that leaves 2,200 pounds, which isn’t divisible by 30 either (its digits don’t add up to a multiple of 3, so it can’t be divisible by 3, which means 30 won’t work either). So as it turns out, you have 2 meatballs, which add to 2,000, leaving you with 1,200 pounds. And 1,200 = 30 x 40. You have 2 meatballs and 40 noodles.