Cheerios

How much cereal is inside one of those boxes of Cheerios?
Inspired by Leif's Fruit Loop Necklace, which I bought a regular size (15oz.) box of Cheerios, and set about counting them.

Before I opened the box, I took a quick poll of the people present. How many Cheerios would be in here? I guessed 890, Mike guessed 734, Ken guessed 662 and Antonia guessed 1200.

How about you? Cheerios.

Although the physical count interested me, I was excited to find out how long the cheerios string would be. Would I have enough necklaces for a whole camp of underprivleged youths?

I dumped the box into a bowl and started counting. I quickly realized this was going to take forever, and devised a faster way to string them. I fashioned a 4-inch "needle" out of a wire hanger, and dragged it repeatedly through the cereal. This was remarkably effective.

I used wooden clothes pins to keep track of 50s and 100s of Cheerios.

It took about 7 hours to string up the o's. I spent the time in front of the TV, watching American Movie Channel.

The final count was finally in: Four thousand, eight hundred and two Cheerios were in the box.

I was surprised to find that most of the cheerios were complete circles, with less than 40 little broken bits (oddios).
This was WAY more Cheerios than I expected, although by the time I had counted 1000, I had a pretty good idea that my estimates were way off.

Only one hundred Cheerios took up 18 5/8 inches of string.

The next day after work, Jane, Brianna and Mike helped me hoist the entire Cheerios string outside to measure it. The string was half a block long. It was so long that I had to move the tape 3 times to measure the whole string. It ended up being 73 feet, 2 5/8" long. At last, a Cheerios necklace suitable for Mr. T!

The recommended serving size is about one cup of Cheerios. That is about 5 feet worth, so if you eat your height in Cheerios, you are getting 50% of your RDA of Folic Acid.

Steve Pham hated Cheerios because they never give out toy prizes.

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write Rob@Cockeyed.com Last updated November 6, 2000.

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