Congaratulations - Teacher Notes
Congaratulations
The World's longest conga line happened on March the 13th 1998 in Little Havana, Miami.
119,986 people took part.
William is organising a charity event to form a conga line from London to Brighton - about 55 miles (90 km).
Can he be sure this line will break the record?
Pupils may want to measure or estimate the distance between 2 people in a Conga line. They might choose to do this with a number of people, to get a better average length. They might need to do a line a short as possible and as long as possible with the same number of people.
Sample answer
The distance between people in a conga line can vary, if they are squeezed up, it might be as little as just over the length as somebody's forearm from elbow to fingers - roughly half a metre. However at full stretch, the distance between the conga dancers could be as much as 0.75 of a metre. Thus a Conga line of 120,000 people could be as short as 60,000 metres (60km) or as long as 90 km.
So the upper estimate of the line length for 120,000 people is pretty close to the distance between London and Brighton.
William can beat the world record if people all stand reasonably close together.
