After an innocent tweet from New Zealand’s Ryan Nixon surfaced, regarding a debate he was having with his friends, the tweet split the Internet into a frenzy. The poll on twitter had over 220,000 votes and the question was simple, “are there more doors or wheels in the world?” Since the tweet was posted, this question has gone viral across all other social media platforms, Berkley High has taken on the popular conflict.

Doors argument: Sports Editor, Sarah Cantor ‘23
At first thought, a door assumes its classic slim and sturdy image with a knob that turns to open into another space. Although this description covers the various doors for entering and moving within houses, buildings, and other enclosed structures, Webster Dictionary more clearly defines what’s considered a door: a hinged or otherwise movable barrier that allows ingress (entry) into and egress (exit) from an enclosure. Thus, a door includes lockers, windows, closet doors, ovens, microwaves, compartments, drawers, bathroom stalls, fridges, and infinitely more possibilities—anything with a hinge that opens in or out is a door. However, to not mercy the number of wheels in the world, let’s only consider the previous examples (lockers, windows, closet doors, ovens, microwaves, compartments, drawers, bathroom stalls, fridges); I do not need to exaggerate the numbers to incorporate laptops, lids, shutters, etc, for doors to exceed wheels.
The main structures that contain doors or wheels are either buildings or a form of transportation; both of which have more total doors than wheels. Since the average number of doors per household is 6.4 and there are about 2.3 billion houses in the world that’s already 14.72 billion doors. Adding on, that statistic excludes the cabinets or additional drawers that most houses have an excess of. For instance, in the kitchen alone one most likely has two doors on the fridge, one on the oven, and numerous arrays of cupboard doors that contain utensils, dishware, food, and storage. Beyond the kitchen, any form of storage most likely contains several doors to access it. Meaning, that on top of the 14.72 billion doors in houses for traveling between rooms there are anywhere between tens or hundreds of drawers per the 2.3 billion houses worldwide. There is the same immensity of storage doors in the 4.372 billion buildings in the world as of 2021. Within those buildings, there are at least two entrance doors, and then specialized structures have thousands of additional doors. For example, just in Berkley High School, we have hundreds of lockers, cabinets in the rooms, doors to all the classrooms, functioning windows, and any type of drawer compartments. That’s thousands of doors in every school in the world, and schools aren’t even the most door-populated buildings: apartments, offices, restaurants, every individual compartment that opens is a door.
As for vehicles, although there were 77.9 million motor vehicles produced across the world in 2020, each of those vehicles contains far more doors than wheels. Beyond the car doors, which range from 2-8 counting the trunk, there are several other doors: passenger compartment, middle console, sun roof, windows, and any other opening drawers within the vehicle. Therefore, if you accounting for all of the things within a car that can be considered a door, the total number of doors in a car outnumber the 4 wheels on a typical car or even the 18 wheels on a semi-truck.
Furthermore, considering how Henry is distinguishing a wheel asanything that spins on an axis, we can consider a door as anything with a hinge. In doing so, the numerous gears he is quantifying are exceeded by all the hinged materials: lids, laptops, gates, or any openable object. Adding on, many argue in favor of wheels once they factor in the 5 million wheels on lego vehicles or other play toys, but not only do most of those vehicles have functioning doors, there are also billions of dollhouses existing in the world with 10s to 100s of doors per house. Any category that includes a variety of wheels, there is a parallel category for doors that outnumbers it.
Additionally, the students of Berkley seem to agree that there are more doors than wheels in the world. For instance, senior Jake Domzalski advocates for team doors and sophomore Will Knight reasons that there are more doors because of, “All the apartment buildings, all the buildings around the world, and (in) the schools, you can see all the lockers. Everything just has doors, every room”. Even those who originally sided with team wheels, such as freshmen Ivy Findling, swayed towards doors. For Ivy, this happened once she realized it’s “not just doors that lead you to a room.”She know also thinks that there are more doors.
In conclusion, a door isn’t just an entryway with a knob, but any hinged object that provides access through it. Therefore, within the billion houses and vehicles in the world there are several more doors than wheels.

Wheels Argument: Henry Robertson ’23
Take a second and look around. Maybe you are at school, work, or at your house. There might be a door that leads to a hallway or a cabinet where you keep your belongings. However, think outside the box about all of the wheels that surround you, and the true answer to this argument will be revealed. The answer is that there are more wheels, and the battle between doors and wheels is not even close because wheels wipe out the competition.
According to Merriam Webster, a wheel is defined as a circular frame of hard material that can turn on an axle and can be solid, partially solid, or spoked (a radial member of a wheel, joining the hub to the rim). The first example of a wheel that comes to mind is a wheel that is used for transportation. Some examples of this are the tires on cars, shopping carts, strollers, etc. However, the keys to the argument are the wheels that are hidden or not thought about often. For example, think of all the wheels used in gears. Gears are used in many things, including bikes, factories, cars, and more. A gear is defined as a rotating circular machine with sets of toothed wheels. Also, small wheels in watches, toys, office chairs, and drawers will help drive the wheels argument to victory.
In 2020, there will be 77.9 million motor vehicles produced across the world. Many consider a car to only have four wheels. Yet, many people forget that a car possesses a steering wheel and a spare tire. This means in 2020 alone, there were 467.4 million wheels produced, counting only the car industry. On average, cars also possess six gears. How do cars shift from reverse to drive? Well, they do so using the gears within the car’s engine. Speaking of cars, there are also many toy cars. According to author Renato Sago, 16.5 Hot Wheels are produced every second. This means Hot Wheels makes around 520 million cars in a year. Every hot-wheel car has at least four wheels and two to four doors. Oh no, the doors don’t open on Hot Wheels cars. That sucks! As a result, Hot Wheels alone produces approximately 2 billion wheels per year, and, yet, it produces sero doors. Yes, there are some toy cars with doors that do open, but many toy cars only have two doors.
Cars aren’t the only things that use wheels for transportation; shopping carts and bicycles are also examples. According to a former Walmart Supercenter worker on Reddit, there are around 2000 shopping carts at the store, compared to 800 shopping carts at the neighborhood market Walmart. In 2021, there were a total of 3,570 Walmart supercenters and 799 Walmart neighborhood markets in the USA. All the Walmarts combined in the USA have around 7.8 million shopping carts. Now multiply that number by 4 for each wheel, and that totals 31.2 million wheels. Furthermore, there are around 1 billion bicycles in the world today, and the number keeps on growing (Bicycle-guider.com). That’s an additional 2 billion wheels to our already massive total of 2.5 billion wheels. There are almost an infinite number of wheels used for transportation in our world today. Other uses of wheels include skateboards, strollers, scooters, tractors, and suitcases.
After extensive research, I have discovered that there areeven wheels within doors. This is the final blow, the final battle to truly understand why there are more wheels than doors. Doorknobs consist of a set of wheels that help rotate the handle. The wheels are set on an axel, which, in this case, is the wheel’s spindle. Sarah was nice enough to already calculate how many doors there are in households across the globe. This number is around 14.72 billion, and now we multiply that by two wheels per door, resulting in around 29.44 billion wheels in total for wheels within doors in households. Through all of my research my calculations total to around 34 billion wheels. However, in our world, that is only the floor, or the bare minimum of wheels. There are many more possibilities and opportunities where wheels exist, but one man cannot count the nearly infinite number of wheels.
In response to the wheels vs. doors debate, students at Berkley let their thoughts be known. I got the chance to interview senior Kaila Welcher on the viral debate. When asked if there were more doors or wheels in the world, she responded quickly, saying, “Wheels easily.” I asked for an explanation on why she thinks there are more wheels, and again she answered quickly, saying, “I am a genius.” I also got to ask what side Junior Jacob Sheriff is taking in the viral debate. Sheriff stated, “There are definitely more wheels.” He backs up his statement by saying, “Think about all the cars and trucks.”
To conclude, there are many wheels roaming around the globe. By exploring, taking risks, and thinking outside the box, the conclusion to whether there are more wheels or doors has become much easier to make. And while Sarah did make some strong arguments for the doors side of the argument, the wheel side of the argument wins because of the many uses of wheels. Production designer Jeff Davis summed up the argument perfectly, saying, “There’s a wheel on every door, but not a door on every wheel.”