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.
Preemptive strike of 11/18/07:
Here’s a big number for you: How many snowflakes have fallen on the earth?
[QUOTE=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.
[/QUOTE]
Would the number of snowflakes fallen be only limited to our planet?
He said “since the beginning of time”, so he’s not limiting the time to the age of the earth, anyway. Hah, he blundered!