Ooooooh Kaaaaayy. If you have been anywhere around a device that has access to the internet, I am sure that you have heard this question: Are there more doors or wheels in the world? The question seems simple enough on the surface. And without thinking too far into it, you may throw out one of the two answers as your guess. But what is really getting people going is when you think about it a little harder. What constitutes a wheel? What is the definition of a door? Hinges or no hinges? Is anything round a wheel? These are the kind of in-depth questions that is causing a huge stir on the internet. But if you have read any of my other articles, you know that I don’t just look at things at the surface. I travel to depths of unnecessary detail. I ask the questions that no one else is asking. So with that, I want to offer up arguments for both sides today. Or, in better terms, I want to find the biggest contributors for both wheels and doors. And, after presenting the support, you can make a properly-educated decision based on your thoughts. Here we go.
First off, we have to understand the definition of a wheel and a door is. Can anything round be a wheel? In that case, every rock and Tupperware lid and whatnot could be a wheel. That would vastly outnumber the doors by a loooong shot. But what about doors? Can anything that covers a hole be considered a door? That could end up being anything and everything in this world. I can just hear the arguers of the door saying, “EVery THINg is a DOOR”. In which case, I’d say, “please use that door on your mouth and shhh”. So there obviously has to be some parameters set into place to allow us to come up with some reasonable numbers.
The Merriam-Webster Definition of “Door” is:
a usually swinging or sliding barrier by which an entry is closed and opened
also: a similar part of a piece of furniture.
So understanding this, my thoughts for something to be considered a door, that something has to be:
Hanging or could be hung
Has to stop someone/something from entering or leaving a place without moving said door
It has to swing or slide.
The third point is important because that eliminates lids and coverings. This also brings up another point. By the stated definition and points above, something like a blanket or curtain could be considered a door. I will throw in my own necessity for something to be considered a door by saying it HAS to be rigid. The door can not be easily torn, cut, ripped, etc..
Lastly, regarding doors, a simple doorway can not be considered a door. I understand that it’s convenient when giving directions, “through the doorway and to the left”, but a doorway does not follow rule number two listed above. Thus, it should be considered an archway.
The Merriam-Webster Definition of “Wheel” is:
a circular frame of hard material that may be solid, partly solid, or spoked and that is capable of turning on an axle.
So the rules for a wheel are:
Has to be circular
Has to be rigid enough to support a decent amount of weight.
Has to be able to turn on an axle
There are a few reasons why these rules are important. Rule one is important because, though the Mythbusters said it was plausible, wheels can not be square or any other shape other than round. Rule number two is important because I could easily set out a round bowl with a little bit of milk out on the counter overnight, and it would solidify, it would be a circle, and it would revolve around an axle. But as soon as I were to put any weight on the nasty smelly pre-cheese disk, it would smush into a putrid pile of cottage cheese (I’m 80% certain that this is the actual process to make cottage cheese). Rule number three is important because, if it weren’t for this rule, everything that is remotely round and rigid would be considered a wheel. That means every rock, every round lid, every bowl, every coin, etc.. So this rule prevents that from happening.
And just like doors, I am going to throw my own requirement up here: it must have been created for the purpose of being a wheel. If not, then every ring could be a wheel. And anyone with some simple punching tools could make any other round object a wheel. So we won’t be looking at potential wheels, but rather manufactured wheels.
So with all of those parameters in place, let's look at the BIGGEST contributors to both doors and wheels. We will just be looking at the major contributors for this article. We could dive deep into the smaller contributors, but they are very unlikely to make any sort of noticeable impact on the overall numbers. So, by sticking with the biggest, it will allow you to make a better, clearer decision on your own.
Before we dive deep, let's rule out two contributors that everyone is thinking of…vehicles and office buildings. To be brief, vehicles have an average of six doors (including the glove compartment and gas doors, and excluding the trunk and hood as those would be hatches) and six wheels (including the spare and steering wheel). Now you might be thinking, “what about semis, they have a bunch of wheels!” And, yes, they do! But they also usually have more compartments on the outside of the truck, so it too cancles out. So most vehicles don’t contribute significantly to either argument side….except for one kind. But we will talk about that later.
The next one we will rule out is office spaces. A common argument I’ve heard is “each office chair has at least 3-4 wheels”. If office spaces had no other doors other than the entries and exits to the building and to the offices, then this would be a major contributor to team wheels. But there are many more doors than just the entry doors in an office space. Just think about desks, filing cabinets, bathrooms, kitchen/breakroom area, the list could go on. These two figures cancel each other out. Again, this would be no major contributor to either side of the argument.
Okay, let’s go!
Doors
Where do most doors come from? Obviously, houses, cabinets, etc., so let’s cover those first!
Houses
The average house has 2 exterior doors and 1 garage door. They also, on average, have 14 interior doors. The standard kitchen has 12 cabinets and 5 extra doors (fridge door x2, oven, microwave, pantry). We will go ahead and add 3 doors on tv stands for each house. So, with this basic average, each home has around 37 doors. Multiply that with 129,930,000 (the number of houses in the US alone), you get a little over 4.8 billion doors in homes alone.
Coffins
Yes, it got dark. A quick look at old coffins revealed to me something surprising: most old and ancient caskets had doors on them! I thought they were basically a pine box with a lid put on them. But nope! Most of them had some sort of door! Most modern-day caskets have two doors, one for the upper body, and one for the lower body. So with the old combined with the new, we can slap a neat figure of 1.5 doors per casket. How many caskets are there? Let's answer this by doing some figuring (caution, scary math ahead).
It is estimated that 107 billion people have ever lived on this earth. Let's say that 90% of these people had family or friends that loved them enough to bury them in some sort of container. That leaves us the number of 96.3 billion. Now with that, let's say 15% of the 96.3 billion were cremated and their ashes were put in a container with a lid and not a door like a coffin would have. That leaves us with the number 81.9 billion. And out of those 81.9 billion, let's say 10% of them were buried in a closed container or a coffin that had a lid. That leaves us with the number 73.7 billion, and we can assume that's how many coffins with doors have been buried. So 73.7 billion times 1.5 leaves us with a total of 110.5 billion doors underground. That is a lot!
These are by far the two biggest contributors to doors! Let’s move to Wheels
Wheels
The three biggest contributors to wheels are, surprisingly: toys, skateboards, and motorcycles.
Motorcycles
I told you we would talk about one vehicle. Motorcycles have the luxury of having a 2:0 wheel to door ratio. That is extremely helpful to the wheel argument! There are 8.6 million registered, road-safe motorcycles in the US as of 2021. So that is 19.2 million wheels! What about dirtbikes? According to research, 8.02% of households own a dirt bike. If you multiply that percentage by the number of houses listed above, you get 10.7 million dirtbikes in the US. Multiply 10.7 million times 2 and you get 21.4 million wheels! So with motorcycles and dirtbikes alone, you get 40.6 million wheels.
Skateboards
If you thought a 2:0 wheel to door ratio was nice, wait till you hear that a skateboard is a whopping 8:0 ratio. How? Skateboards have 4 wheels. And inside each wheel is a bearing that also fits the criteria for a wheel. So now the question is, how many skateboards are there? Well, there are about 6.44 million skateboarders in the US, and on average, those skateboarders own 3 skateboards. So if we did the math, that's 6.44 million times 3 times 8. That brings us to 154.56 million wheels on skateboards. And that doesn’t count toy skateboards, where there is a significantly bigger number than real skateboards. But we are just about to talk about toys.
Toys
Toys have come in clutch when it comes to wheels. Get prepared to be blown away. The brand LEGO is the world's biggest tire producer. They can produce 700 million tires…a year. They have been a company since the 1930s. But if we just count the last 75 years of their existence, that is 52.5 billion wheels.
Then you have Hotwheels. There are 500 million Hotwheels made in a year. That is 2 billion wheels! Don’t get too confused since that number is higher than LEGO’s wheels produced in a year. LEGO makes actual rubber tires, and Hotwheels make plastic wheels. Hotwheels have existed since 1968. If we just look at the last 30 years of Hotwheels, that is 60 billion wheels produced by Hotwheels alone. A staggering amount.
To me, there is an obvious winner to this argument, but I have presented you with my best research, and I will let you decide for yourself! Just choose correctly, please.
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