Characterising mathematical activities promoted by Fermi problems
Albarracín Gordo, Lluís (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Ärlebäck, Jonas Bergman

Date:	2019
Abstract:	Some questions that arise in everyday situations, such as 'How long will it take to get to the airport?' can be solved by making a quick estimate. In other cases, we can ask ourselves about situations that we have never considered before, where we are interested in obtaining a first rough answer. This would be the case if we ask how many planes are flying all over the world at a specific time are, or the amount of CO2 emissions we could avoid in a city if gasoline-powered cars were replaced by electric ones. These two questions are examples of Fermi problems. They owe their name to Enrico Fermi, who used this particular type of problems both in his scientific work and as a university teacher. Fermi problems, being smaller, more well-defined and delimited contextualised problems and not real-world problems in all their complexity, have been considered to be miniature-modeling problems (Robinson, 2008).
Grants:	Agencia Estatal de Investigación EDU2017-82427-R Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2017/SGR-497
Note:	Altres ajuts: Research supported by the José Castillejo program (CAS17/00289 reference)
Rights:	Tots els drets reservats.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Mathematics ; Mathematical activities ; Fermi problems ; Educational research
Published in:	For the Learning of Mathematics, Vol.39, Núm. 3 (November 2019) , p. 10-13, ISSN 0228-0671

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