Calculating Nails: How Many Nails Are in the Picture?

[jleo313]

How many nails are in the picture? How did you arrive at this solution?

 

[phinds]

How many nails are in the picture?

lots

How did you arrive at this solution?

I guessed

 

[jleo313]

Excellent guess. :)

 

[lendav_rott]

amount of nails < infinity

 

[mfb]

Including expected, but not visible nails, between 1 000 and 100 000.
The remaining uncertainty can be reduced by a [insert your favorite useless education here] student, ...

Spoiler

...weighting them (and a few individual nails). You don't want to wait until he counted them, right?

 

[D H]

How many nails are in the picture?

Spoiler

800-900.

How did you arrive at this solution?

Spoiler

That looks like about 5 pounds of 2" common nails, so 800-900 nails, depending on the manufacturer.

 

[ZeroPivot]

answer is zero nails. since op was asking for human nails. end thread/

 

[inotyce]

best bet is 1600. Please count it!

 

[D H]

Don't you just hate these post and run kind of brain teasers?

It's been two weeks since the person who posted the question last came back to the site.

 

[fgoodwill]

I DON'T KNOW. However I will try a stupid approximation technique:

Let N be the number of nails ,
V be the average volume of the nail bulk, and u be the average volume of a single nail (at different orientations). Let l be the length of a single nail. Exclude the empty spaces between the nails!

Identify the average shape of the nail bulk. Find u with respect to l (I.e. u = f(l) ). Find V with respect to l (I.e. V = g(l) ).

Now Nu = V, so N = (V/u) = g(l)/f(l)