Which One Wins, the Spaghetti or the Meatball?

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.

Recent Posts

Pick a Math Skill

Pick a Topic