# 550 million-egg omelet would be how big? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 23, 2010, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224 "2010-08-23T23:29:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ManiacMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b782af/32.png) [@ManiacMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ManiacMan)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/1 "2010-08-23T23:29:01Z")
How big would the omelet actually be other than a 550-million egg sized one? ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/2 "2010-08-23T23:38:53Z")
Not that big at all, if you use spider eggs. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/3 "2010-08-23T23:48:42Z")
A large egg is about 2 ounces, which means, assuming approximately the same density as water, it’s got a volume of 0.059 liters, or about 32 million liters (32,000 cubic meters) for the whole omelet. A folded omelet is a semicircle about a centimeter thick (I don’t think we can scale that up too much, since it’ll affect how it cooks), and so would have a volume of 0.5_pi_r^2\*0.1 m . Setting this equal to 32,000 cubic meters and solving for r, we find that this super-omelet would have a radius of over 450 meters. So you’d need a frying pan close to a kilometer across. ---
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/4 "2010-08-23T23:51:18Z")
Assuming average chicken eggs - I found a reference giving dimensions for a chicken egg as 3 inches long by 1.5 inches across. Plugging that into a formula for the volume of an ovoid gives about 3.5 cubic inches per egg. I have no idea how much of the volume of an egg decreases in the process of cooking an omelet, so let’s be generous and say by half. That gives us about 970 million cubic inches of omelet, or 560,000 cubic feet. That gives you an omelet 9 feet high, (about as high as a fairly high room,) 100 feet wide, (twice as wide as a basketball court,) and around 625 feet long (longer than 2 football fields), if it’s perfectly flat on the sides, top, and bottom. How ever did you come up with this concept? :eek: ETA: Hi Chronos. Interesting how we used fairly similar math but different assumptions, huh? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/5 "2010-08-23T23:52:13Z")
Here’s how I would figure this out, to a first order approximation. Determine the average size of an egg. There are lots of ways to do this. Multiply that number by 550,000,000. ---
**Author:** ![standingwave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@standingwave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/standingwave)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2010, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/6 "2010-08-23T23:54:41Z")
> [@ManiacMan](#): > > How big would the omelet actually be other than a 550-million egg sized one? 225E6 times the size of a two-egg omelet? ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/7 "2010-08-24T00:02:28Z")
> [@chrisk](#): > > That gives us about 970 million cubic inches of omelet, or 560,000 cubic feet. Which works out to about 4,189,000 gallons, or enough to fill 6.3 olympic size swimming pools. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/8 "2010-08-24T00:05:05Z")
is it a folded omelet? with or without cheese? area or volume? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/9 "2010-08-24T00:16:42Z")
Math error in my calculation: A centimeter thick is 0.01 m, not 0.1 m. This will increase the radius by over a factor of 3. ---
**Author:** ![fuzzypickles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9d8465/32.png) [@fuzzypickles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fuzzypickles)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/10 "2010-08-24T00:16:46Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > is it a folded omelet? with or without cheese? I prefer bacon myself. ---
**Author:** ![R.P.McMurphy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7993a0/32.png) [@R.P.McMurphy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/R.P.McMurphy)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/11 "2010-08-24T00:48:45Z")
Answer: Just about enough to feed breakfast to the offensive line of a typical NFL team. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/12 "2010-08-24T01:30:49Z")
> [@chrisk](#): > > How ever did you come up with this concept? :eek: The salmonella egg recall, I think. I heard on the radio today it affected half a billion eggs. I, too, was trying to conceptualize that amount. ---
**Author:** ![ManiacMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b782af/32.png) [@ManiacMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ManiacMan)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/13 "2010-08-24T01:54:40Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > > [@chrisk](#): > > > > How ever did you come up with this concept? :eek: > > The salmonella egg recall, I think. I heard on the radio today it affected half a billion eggs. I, too, was trying to conceptualize that amount. Correct. I was trying to do the same thing, and once again the Dopers don’t disappoint. Thanks all… ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/14 "2010-08-24T02:28:18Z")
I suspect that cooking an egg into an omelette causes it to lose a fairly decent portion of its mass as steam. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/15 "2010-08-24T02:31:42Z")
> [@](#): > > I suspect that cooking an egg into an omelette causes it to lose a fairly decent portion of its mass as steam. I would suspect otherwise, based on my experiences in cooking eggs. What water is lost is consumed in the process of denaturing proteins. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/16 "2010-08-24T17:48:52Z")
Well, I make a 4 egg omelet in a 10" pan. If it was no thicker than mine, then the area would have to be around 140 million times as great. The square root of 140 million is nearly 12,000. So it would 120,000" in diameter, which is 10,000’. So it would be nearly two miles in diameter. When I was in grad school (around 50 years ago) a fellow student came in one day and announced that his father–a commodities speculator–had just bought 144,000 dozen eggs and we worked out what sized omelet he could have made (had he taken delivery, which he didn’t and wouldn’t have). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/550-million-egg-omelet-would-be-how-big/551224/17 "2010-08-24T18:38:57Z")
> [@](#): > > Well, I make a 4 egg omelet in a 10" pan. If it was no thicker than mine, then the area would have to be around 140 million times as great. The square root of 140 million is nearly 12,000. So it would 120,000" in diameter, which is 10,000’. So it would be nearly two miles in diameter. Which matches reasonably well with my (corrected) answer.