2QUESTION 2 OF 3
Answer & explanation
The official answer, with Fermi’s reasoning step by step.
Answer & explanation
Official answer
242
mph
How to estimate it
Fermi’s official “Napkin math”
A car on the highway does about 70 mph. How much faster is a falcon that folds its wings and drops like a stone? A lot, so call it three times.
- Highway speed
- ~70 mph
- Falcon beats it by
- × 3
- 70 × 3
- ≈ 210 mph
A car on the motorway does about 120 km/h. How much faster is a falcon that folds its wings and drops like a stone? A lot, so call it three times.
- Motorway speed
- ~120 km/h
- Falcon beats it by
- × 3
- 120 × 3
- ≈ 360 km/h
Rounded assumptions may give a slightly different estimate. The official answer above is the game’s reference value.
Source calculation & reference
- Peregrine falcon 'Frightful', diving after release from an aircraft, 1999
- measured by tail-mounted altimeter
- Reported experimental dive speed
- 389.46 km/h
- ≈ result
- ≈ 242 mph
Reference cited by Fermi: Guinness World Records: Frightful's reported 1999 experimental dive
How close was your guess?
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Compare by ratio: divide the larger number by the smaller one. The closer to 1×, the better.