- Divide and conquer
- Flow (conservation of stuff)
- Scaling and proportional reasoning
- Dimensional analysis
- Opportunism
- Extreme cases
- Balancing competing terms
- Discretization
- Everything is a spring
- Random walks
- Low-entropy expressions
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- What is the spacing between pits on a CD?
- How can an index card be made to glide? How far can a 747 fly on
a full tank? Why are hummingbirds tiny?
- How does the period of a pendulum depend on amplitude?
- By what angle does gravity bend light?
- How many barrels of oil does the US import every year?
- What is the budget of MIT?
- What is the typical gas mileage for a car?
- How much does CO2 increase the earth's temperature?
- How fast (and why) does the earth's rotation axis precess?
- How does the note produced by a wood (or steel) block depend on
its thickness and length?
- What is the average rainfall over the surface of the earth?
- Why are raindrops roughly 0.3 cm in radius?
- How is neutron-star crust like jello?
- Why do stars twinkle?
- How fast do tidal waves travel? How fast do ripples travel?
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