Weekly Awe Biscuit

The goal of the Weekly Awe Biscuit is to grant you a few moments of awe each week, which, in addition to just feeling good, research says can even help you lead a kinder, happier life.

If you sign up for the the Weekly Awe Biscuit, you'll receive a fun, creative, and often perspective-shifting question that forces you to reflect - and do a back-of-the-envelope calculation! - on just how amazing and big the universe is and, by contrast, how tiny and humble we humans are.

How it works:

Every Friday, you receive the week's question by email. It will ask you to do some creative back of the envelope calculating, but each question is open-ended and can be done with basic arithmetic (or feel free to apply much fancier math, if you prefer).

By the following Thursday, you shoot back an email with a single numerical answer and, optionally, an image showing your work. The next day, Friday, whether you submitted an answer or not for the week, Harsh Biscuits will reply with how your result compares with its official calculation and statistics about all of the responses received. It'll include the Harsh Biscuit solution and, perhaps, a particularly creative response or two sent in by the community. And of course, you'll get a new question for the following week!

Wait a second, you're asking me to pay you to do math?

Yup! Think of it as practicing a mathematical form of meditation. But also, if you don't feel like formulating an answer in a given week, no sweat, you'll still receive the results from Harsh Biscuits.

Can you give an example of the type of question I'll get?

They will vary a ton, but here's one:

Imagine you're visiting Niagara Falls (here's a good video for picturing yourself by the Falls). You're in wonder at the volume and force of the water flowing by you every moment. If you were to calculate the entire volume of air that you will breathe in your entire life time, how much time will it take for the equivalent volume of water to flow over Niagara Falls? Answer should be a numerical value and must include units of time to be processed and compared with other answers.

As you can imagine, there are lots of ways to approach this problem and assumptions one could make. However you want to approach it is okay. Harsh Biscuits' answers will veer toward the simplest interpretation and math to do a back of the envelope calculation, but we're excited to see how creatively other folks approach these questions.

Thanks, I like the sound of getting more awe in my life, but doing math for fun just isn't for me OR I can't afford the subscription.

No worries! If math just really isn't your cup of tea, but you like the gist of these types questions, you don't need to submit answers -- you can just look forward to the receiving the answer each week.

Or if you are simply not into the concept of this at all but are on the lookout for other ways to induce awe in your life, there are many other ways to try, like taking awe walks.

And if you can't afford the subscription but are in dire need of some weekly awe in the form of these mathematical meditations, shoot Harsh Biscuits an email at chris@harshbiscuits.com to get squared away.