Ants are famous for being strong: a leafcutter ant can carry 50 times its own weight. So how many ants would it take to pick YOU up and carry you? An ant weighs only 1/200th of a gram, so it can carry only about 1/4 gram. A gram is 1/28th of an ounce, and an ounce is 1/16th of a pound…so it would take several hundred ants to pick up each pound of you. Luckily, there are about 1 quintillion, or 1 million TRILLION ants on Earth to help out!
Wee ones: Who has more legs, you or one of those 6-legged ants?
Little kids: If 4 ants can pick up a 1-gram paper clip, how many ants does it take to pick up 2? Bonus: Which needs more ants to pick it up, a 16-oz bag of chips or a 24-ounce bag of cookies?
Big kids: If a tiny 4-pound Chihuahua carried a big bag of kibble that weighed 50 times its weight, how heavy would that be? (You can round off your weight to the nearest multiple of 10 if you like.) Bonus: If we round off that it takes 500 ants to carry 1 pound, how many ants does it take to carry a 5-pound chocolate bar?
Answers:
Wee ones: The ant has more legs.
Little kids: 8 ants. Bonus: The bag of cookies.
Big kids: 200 pounds. Bonus: 2,500 ants!
