Earth vs. Snowflake

[davidn]

Get out your abacus sliderule, calculator and your best guesstamation skills: Which is greater…the number of grains of sand(earth, dirt, etc.) in the world, or the number of snowflakes that have fallen since the begining of time? thanks for the help.

[Squink]

Preemptive strike of 11/18/07:
Here’s a big number for you: How many snowflakes have fallen on the earth?

@SiouxChief

Just to arrive at an upper boundary estimate for the number, you can use these figures (unit conversion and actual calculation left as an exercise for the reader):

Greatest average annual snowfall anywhere in the U.S.: 430 inches
Age of Earth : 4.54 Billion years
Surface Area of Earth : 510,065,600 km[sup]2[/sup]
Number of snowflakes in 1 cubic foot of snow: up to 10 million

You can further reduce the estimate by using only the Land Surface Area of Earth : 148,939,100 km[sup]2[/sup] or the amount of Earth continually covered in snow: 42 million square miles

Interestingly, I found a page where people have attempted a similar calculation, and have arrived at a figure of approximately 10[sup]30[/sup] snowflakes. Here is the (crappy) page. Go there and search on 1030 to find the relevant text. I wasn’t able to find the worksheet or calculations to which they refer, but it gives us something to go on.

[Flander]

Would the number of snowflakes fallen be only limited to our planet?

[yelimS]

He said “since the beginning of time”, so he’s not limiting the time to the age of the earth, anyway. Hah, he blundered!