009 = Big Statues and Big Stack Chews

**Big Statues and Big Stack Chews** is the ninth episode of A Problem Squared.

* Could pennies make a girlfriend for the Statue of Liberty?
* What's the optimum burger size for your mouth?
* Where is Matt's topography video?

Here's Bec's burger video analysis: (Link)

And for Bec's 5KTS t-shirt, head here: (Link)

### Summary

The intro referenced The Great British Bake Off and one of its presenters, Noel Fielding. Bec announced her new position as the ambassador for the Crafts Council. Matt mentioned he won the Christopher Zeeman medal for his maths communication work.

@Andrew\_Taylor asked, if all pennies were melted and made into a girlfriend for the Statue of Liberty, how large it would be comparatively. Matt mentioned the obsolescence of Australia's pennies, and how it meant choosing between paying with cash or a card could allow one to save a few cents on a purchase. Bec jokingly asked if this was the plot of *Catch Me If You Can* (though she said "Catch Me If **I** Can"). Matt, who tried to solve this problem, found there to be 130 billion pennies United States pennies in circulation, each lasting 25 years. He explained that because of a change in material, pennies produced after 1982 consist of only 2.5% copper. Because of this he assumed in his calculations that all pennies in circulation consisted of 2.5% copper. The Statue of Liberty consists of copper panels held up by an iron skeleton inside. Matt estimated the Statue of Liberty to contain 100 tons of copper, which means melting down all United States pennies would give one enough copper to create 81.25 statues the same size as the Statue of Liberty, or one statue 9 times the size. But Matt suggested instead that the United States should stop making new pennies, and reallocate the copper they would have used to make pennies in the next year to construct a solid metal statue consisting of the same mixture of metals as pennies. This statue, according to his calculations, would be within 10% of the size of the Statue of Liberty. Bec gave this solution a ding.

Burgermeister on Twitter asked how tall a burger could be while still allowing one with a standard human jaw to bite through it from top to bottom. Bec found that the average human jaw opened with a maximum height of 35 - 55 mm, or approximately three finger widths. Bec ordered the tallest permanently available burgers from the menus of 5 restaurants. She filmed her analysis for a YouTube video which she uploaded to her channel. In order from shortest to tallest, the burgers were Burger King's Double Whopper, McDonald's Big Mac, KFC's Zinger Stacker, a vegan one from Honest Burgers, and one from Wicked Burger. The one from Honest Burgers was the first that Bec was unable to bite through from top to bottom without using any tricks. Bec then tried squishing them down, and was able to bite all except the one from Wicked Burger. Matt found that Burgermeister's Twitter account had been suspended after they asked their question. Matt requested that Burgermeister give Bec's solution a ding using a new account.

Matt gave an update on his yet-to-be-released topography video, which came out of 008 = Height Matters and Dish Splatters. He had found that the United Kingdom does **not** include topography when calculating land area, and that if countries did account for topography, Switzerland would overtake the Netherlands and possibly also Denmark in the ranking of countries by surface area. He also found that if curvature of the Earth is accounted for in calculation of the area of the United Kingdom, it only changes the result by about 0.1% - 0.2%, so the authorities do not bother accounting for it. However, Geoscience Australia **did** account for it when calculating the surface of Australia. Bec gave Matt a "di" (with the "ng" presumably coming when he releases his video).