how many grains of sand make a beach?

Answer 1

Don't ask stupid questions......

Answer 2

as many as there are stars in the sky. You can actually estimate it. Assume an average sand grain has a diameter of 0.2 mm and it is approximately round. Calculate its volume (lets say its 0.03 cubic mm). Assume that a pile of sand has 50 % empty space between grains (ahhh, it's a ballpark figure). So, for every cubic mm, there is maybe 15 or 20 grains? (0.03*15 = 0.45 cubic mm, the other half is air or water).

There are 1000 * 1000 * 1000 cubic mm in a cubic meter. A cubic meter then has about 15 billion grains. Did I do that right? too many zeroes. I'm doing this off the top of my head, sorry.

Then calculate how many cubic meters of sand are in a beach. Take a small beach, that is one kilometer long by 150 meters wide (low to high tide plus some), and guess it is 5 meters deep (this number can change a bit). so whats that, 750,000 cubic meters. Hmm that seems high. Multiply that by the number of grains in one cubic meter and there you are.

So I'd say an average small beach, like one you might see on the coast in Maine or New Hampshire, has a few quadrillion grains of sand. Did you follow that? Does it seem to make sense? (it's friday, time to stop thinking so hard). Shoulda used a calculator.

Answer 3

OK lets work on Busters arguement above.

Each sand grain is 0.2 mm in diameter.
Assuming that 50% of space is used, how many are in a cubic meter? The answer is 1000 mm divided by 0.2 all divided by 2
= (5000^3)/2

Now how many cubic meters in an average beach? Lets say that the beach is 50 meters wide, 1000 meters long, and 10 meters deep.
This is 500000 cubic meters.

So how many sand grains?
= 500000 * (5000^3)/2

= 31250 000000 000000
= 31 thousand million million

= 31 quadrillion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrillion

Answer 4

There isn't a definate answer becasue since sand is a livimg creature it has babys and the babys keep adding to the amount of sand on the beach.

Answer 5

AND, In every grain of sand there is a whole world.

Answer 6

There are different beaches, each with differing quantities of grains of sand. If you really want one of us to answer you will need to be more specific, please.

Answer 7

1 grain makes a very, very, very small beach

Answer 8

the same amount that makes an identical beach the same size

Answer 9

well one time i was really bored and started counting sand and i made it all the way up to...

I HAVE NO CLUE!

Answer 10

Daniel, how long is a piece of string??

Answer 11

lots more than the world population.