 How
much is inside a bag of Doritos? Everyone knows that there are just the
right amount of chips in a bag to make you feel queasy, but only a few
people know exactly how many chips that is.A friend of Leif's sister, Doug Snyder of Austin, Texas wrote in and suggested this, and several other great ideas. Why can't everyone be more like Doug? So, here it is, the first "how much is inside" that was suggested by someone I don't know! |
 On Wednesday night I drove out to Davis where Brooke's new apartment is. She and Pam were hanging out, ready to embark on a bold scientific odyssey. The goal was to lay the chips out next to each other to discover the square footage of one 13.5 oz. bag of Doritos NACHO CHEESIER. The bag was US$2.96 |
 We
quickly surveyed the available floorspace, and decided that there wasn't
enough to lay the chips out...I mean, she has a good four or five square
yards of tile in the kitchen, but we really didn't want to be cramped in
there.
Anyway, Pam has access to the MU down at the University of California at Davis, so we walked over in the drizzly rain. We picked out a nice spot on the tile floor near the DANGEROUS ramp. |
Of course, when you open a bag of chips, there is only about a third of the bag that is actually full of chips, the rest is full of deadly nitrogen!. |
We dumped the chips out on the floor and spread the intact triangles out first.
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After those 6 were aligned, we started tessellating the rest of the chips. We sat silently, arranging chips. Brooke noticed that this activity was not unlike that of teenage speed-freaks, methodically arranging chips on the floor. |
The chips on the floor started taking a rough shape and we realized we had better whip them into a shape we could measure with ease: a diamond. The rest of the corn-dust was quickly arranged to finish off the shape. We were looking at the VERY TOP of the food pyramid. We measured the sides and calculated the area: It was 576 square inches, exactly 4 square feet! |
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It was a good thing that the measurements were done because as soon as we
were finished, the women with the brooms came by and eyed our work.
Then the A/V guys came by with an overhead projecter. It was the middle of the night, and this place was still like grand central station. |
Brooke and Pam survey our work. |
goldfinger! |
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We cleaned up our chips and put them back into the bag. We weren't really hungry, so we left them by the stairs. I am sure someone enjoyed them! |
The
bag says the serving size is 17 chips...it seemed like a lot to me too,
but BOY are they good!