Science Question for April 2013

X is interested in the storage capacity of the human brain. It's probably unknown as to the ultimate capacity of the brain, but this April question is about something really possible.

Say you had 100,000 people from all 50 states, all adult age groups, all cultural backgrounds, all economic backgrounds, and they all had IQs of at least 100. Given a study period of 8 hours, how many digits of pi would each person be able to recite from memory? Say there was a really good prize for each person in the top 1% of reciters.

How many digits of pi do you think people in the winning 1% group could recite?

• Overall champion __________ digits
• Average of the 1% group__________digits
• Lowest score in the 1% group__________digits

Briefly, how did you decide on your answers?
Put your answers in a comment at the bottom of this post.

Science Question for March 2013

Say you had a bunch of fruit jars, and you had a different chemical element in each jar. How many distinctly different compounds could you make? Assume you had the best lab in the world. Just stick to the known elements.

Questions:

1. What's the limit to how many compounds you could make?
2. Do you think one of the compounds would be the strongest material in the world?
3. Do you think one of the compounds would cure cancer? Diabetes? Hunger? Arrogance?

Answer in the comment section. There's a prize for every right answer.