How many houses?
How many buildings are there in the world? Everything from teepees to skyscrapers? Well, no one has made a nice neat list of buildings for the whole world. Some countries count them up, while others don’t; even inside the countries who do, it’s usually cities and towns who keep track. But we can use math to make a good guess. The more people stuffed into a town, the more buildings they need – except when it gets so high that lots of people live in one tall building. Out on farmland there might be just 1 building every square km, but in Wellington, one street block 1/20 of a km wide might have 20 buildings crammed into it. If we run the numbers, we can find a guess at least for the New Zealand. Just remember that might not work everywhere: we’re pretty sure Antarctica has more penguins than buildings!
Wee ones: Look at your home from the outside. Is it taller than it is wide, or wider than its height?
Little kids: How many people live in the building you call home? Talk about it worth a grown-up! Bonus: If a building has 7 floors with 10 people living on each, how many people live there?
Big kids: If a square city block has 5 buildings on each edge, how many buildings are on the whole block? (Remember, the corner buildings each sit on 2 sides!) Bonus: If 100 people live in each, how many people is that?
Answers:
Wee ones: Different for everyone…an apartment building is taller than wide, but a house (like a ranch style) could be wider than tall.
Little kids: Different again…count just your family for a single-family home, but an apartment building will have many more. Bonus: 70 people.
Big kids: 16 buildings, since each side adds 4 new ones. Another take: 5 on a side means 2 corner buildings and 3 middle ones; you have 4 of those sets of 3 plus the 4 corners. Bonus: 1,600 people.