to the nearest 10 will do. it's for a bet!
2007-01-26 03:05:22 · 12 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Earth Sciences & Geology
i'm referring to an average size beach grain of sand!
2007-01-26 03:17:41 · update #1
About 379.
Well, YOU can ask daft questions, so I can give daft answers. Fair's fair!
2007-01-26 04:05:25 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
To the nearest 10??? Are you serious? You could never get an answer better than to the nearest nonillion.
First, the size of a grain of sand is not a standard value. All you can hope for is some approximate of the average size, which is 0.2 mm in diameter (for a volume of 4.18×10^-12 m³)
Then the volume of earth is also known only as an approximation: 1.083 207 3×10^12 km³.
Divide one by the other, and you get 2.58×10^32. But this is just the volume RATIO, and everyone knows that if you pack sheres together, you leave gaps. And grains of sands are not always perfect spheres. And that packing this much sand will deform some grains and change the density towards the core.
So, the best answer you can ever hope of getting is to the nearest 10^30, that is one nonillion in the US short scale (and one quintillion in the long scale used in the rest of the world).
I don't know what you bet, but with such a half baked question, I think you must have lost.
2007-01-26 03:25:49 · answer #2 · answered by Vincent G 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Actually that is a really good question. I haven't been able to find an "authoritative" answer, but I can show you how I would approach the problem and get some back of the envelop bounds on the answer.
To simplify the question a bit, I am going to restrict the definition of grains of sand to unconsolidated (no sandstone included here), especially that found in the arid regions of the earth excluding polar regions. I am also going to restrict the question to sand residing at or near the surface. If we do that, we find that these regions comprise about 25% of the land area which is ~30% of the surface. If we take those numbers and then multiply them by the surface area of the planet we have the area of the arid regions. If we assume an average depth for sand in all of these regions (maybe 10 meters is reasonable), we can calculate a volume. All we need now is the volume of a sand grain and we can calculate the number of grains needed to fill that volume. Grains of sand range in diameter from ~1mm to 0.0625mm. A simple result would just divide the two volumes, but this would ignore how the grains are packed (how much void space exists) the void space could range from a few to fifty percent.
Doing all of this I find that there are on the order of 1022 to 1025 grains of sand at the surface. This is obviously a very gross estimate. If you include sandstone and beaches, etc., the number will obviously go up. Hope this helps.
BTW I looked this up and listed the source so you know this is not my answer but I do hope it helped
2007-01-26 03:22:56 · answer #3 · answered by k®ì§ 2 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Sand particles vary greatly in size. So a cubic inch can contain between 1000 and 100000 grains of sand. Assuming that you have a medium fine sand, which has 50000 grinas per inch cubed, let's switch to metric units and to the math:
this corresponds to 3000 grains per cubic centrimeter. The volume of the Earth is (4/3)*pi*r^3=4*(637000000)^3=1033899412000000000000000000 cubic centimeters.
Dividing this by 3000 we get
344633137333333333333333 grains of sand
2007-01-26 03:19:04 · answer #4 · answered by stopwar11112 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
volume of the earth is 1.0832073 x 10^12 km^3
volume of 1 grain of sand is appr. 1 mm^3
2007-01-26 03:14:18 · answer #5 · answered by E 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
~Volume Earth = 1.1 x 10^21
~Volume sand = 1.1 x 10^-12
~1x10^33 grains of sand in the volume of earth.
2007-01-26 03:15:12 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Your q is too general to allow it to be to the nearest ten grains. Builders Sand, Moulder"s Sand, beach sand,river sand, desert sand(please specify which desert)....etc. Try again
2007-01-26 03:14:29 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
"The volume of Earth is 1,083,206,246,123,080,894,852 m3, or around 1.0832×1021 m3, in scientific notation"
so, find out how many grains of the type of sand of your choice will fit in 1 cubic meter and multiply that by 1,083,206,246,123,080,894,852 for a good estimate
2007-01-26 03:14:20 · answer #8 · answered by answerman2000 1 · 0⤊ 2⤋
About 184,325,870,020,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Give or take 10.
2007-01-26 03:13:58 · answer #9 · answered by dewhatulike 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
10 to the power of a million, billion, trillion, zillion.
2007-01-26 03:14:14 · answer #10 · answered by Quickswitch79 2 · 0⤊ 3⤋