Estimation question

What is the weight of the Empire State Building?

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Tests estimation skill: decomposing a physical scale question into material volume and density with clearly stated assumptions.

Estimate the building's dimensions, height, footprint, and number of floors, stating these as rough assumptions.
Estimate the primary materials used, mainly steel frame and concrete, since those dominate a skyscraper's total mass.
Estimate material volume per floor based on assumed footprint and material thickness, then multiply by the number of floors.
Apply known density figures for steel and concrete to convert volume into weight.
Sum the material weights for a rough total, showing the arithmetic clearly.
State clearly that this is a rough order of magnitude estimate, not a precise figure.

States clear assumptions upfront, for example roughly 102 floors and a steel and concrete structure, since the building's real specs are not something you would know precisely.
Breaks the estimate into steel frame weight and concrete weight separately, since they have very different densities and proportions in the structure.
Shows the arithmetic explicitly, volume per floor times number of floors times material density, rather than jumping to a final number.
Sanity checks the result against known published estimates of skyscraper weights in the hundreds of thousands of tons range, if recalled.

Giving a single guessed number with no shown reasoning or stated assumptions behind it.
Ignoring that steel and concrete have very different densities, which matters for an accurate rough estimate.

How would your estimate change if you accounted for interior furnishings and systems as well?
Which assumption in your calculation carries the most uncertainty?