"A fool chooses to starve himself and we all watch.

One billion people have no choice and we ignore them."

David BlaineDavid Blaine is spending 44 days in a

transparent box hanging over the Thames. In the next 44 days I will:

• Spend 15 days and 14 hours asleep. – 8.5 hours per night 44 = 374

• Spend 8 days and 10⅔ hours at school. – 380 minutes/day 32 school days = 12160 mins

• Earn £111.– 6 Saturdays ( £15 paper round + £3.50 pocket

money ) = £111

• Have 17 hours of trampolining lessons– ( 7 Mondays 1 hour ) + ( 6 Wednesdays 1⅔

hours ) = 17 hours

• Be given 80 pieces of homework.– Monday Thursday = 10 pieces– 10 pieces / 4 days 32 school days = 80 pieces

• Eat around 1.76kg of cereal.– 40 g per day 44 days

• Consume around 80 000 kCal. – 1800 to 1900 per day 44 days

• Deliver roughly 750 newspapers.– Between 16 and 18 per day (depends on who is on

holiday, if it is a weekend etc) 44 days • Read around 8000 ‘column inches’ of

newspaper– Average of roughly 30 minutes per day or more, at a

speed of 60 inches per 10 minutes• Notice about 88 news stories about David

Blaine!– 2 per day 44 days

• Watch almost 57 hours of television – 9 hours per week 6 2/7 weeks

• Drink 66 litres of water.– 1.5 litres a day over 44 days

David Blaine is spending 44 days and 44 nights with no food, only water. Suspended in a glass box next to the River Thames he will try to accomplish this feat.

Facts:•on average David Blaine will drink 5 litres of water a day•in the River Thames each day in summer 30,000 maxilitres of water flow past•each day in winter 800 maxilitres flow past•1 maxilitre = 1000 litres

Water

Boxed InIf we take the average human volume to be 4ft cubed and the box that David Blaine is in, is 7x7x3ft or 147ft cubed then you could fit 36.75 people in the box. If there are 1 billion people starving in the world then to fit them all in boxes you would need 272 000 000 boxes to fit them all in. if placed side by side the ground space would equal 5712000000 ft squared, roughly the size of the united Arab Emirates.

Above The Below – with mini battenbergs

If David’s box was stuffed with Mr Kipling’s mini Battenbergs and he was to eat the recommended daily intake of calories per day, how long would the Battenbergs last?

A mini battenburg measures approximately 6cm by 2.5cm by 2.5cm.The box is 3ft by 7ft by 7ft, which is approximately 91cm by 213cm by 213cm.Volume of Battenberg = 37.5cm3

Volume of box = 4128579cm3

The volume of David BlaineThe body consists mainly of water. 1 gram of water is 1 cubic centimetre.If David blaine weighs 76kg or 76000g (12 stone), his volume would be 76000cm^3.Number of Battenbergs you can fit in the box with David = (Volume of box – Volume of David Blaine) / Volume of Battenberg(4128579 – 76000) / 37.5 = 108069

However, some of the Battenbergs will be compressed under the weight of the Battenbergs above. To compensate for this, we will say that you can fit 110000 Battenbergs in the box.The amount of calories in one Battenberg is 142.This means that there are around 15,620,000 calories in the box. (110000 x 142)We’ll round it off to 16,000,000 calories.For a man, the recommended daily intake of calories per day is 2500.There are 6400 days worth of calories. (16,000,000 / 2500)The mini Battenbergs will last approximately 18 years (rounded to the nearest year).