# How many Cotton Balls/Feathers would it take to amount to a ton? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 11, 2003, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-cotton-balls-feathers-would-it-take-to-amount-to-a-ton/218319 "2003-12-11T08:27:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Blayvis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b782af/32.png) [@Blayvis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blayvis)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2003, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-cotton-balls-feathers-would-it-take-to-amount-to-a-ton/218319/1 "2003-12-11T08:27:07Z")
For some reason the idea popped into my head today. You always hear the “What weighs more, a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers”… well, did anybody ever estimate how many Feathers that would take? It could be easier to estimate with Cotton balls… Either way, I just got that question in my head. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2003, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-cotton-balls-feathers-would-it-take-to-amount-to-a-ton/218319/2 "2003-12-11T11:12:24Z")
Feathers vary a heck a lot. A big peacock feather might weigh about 10 grams (total guess there), a downy feather like you’d find in a pillow maybe 0.1g. Say if you had an “average” feather that weighed 0.5g, then you’d need two million of them to add up to a ton, since there are a million grams in a metric ton (1000kg). ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2003, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-cotton-balls-feathers-would-it-take-to-amount-to-a-ton/218319/3 "2003-12-11T14:47:52Z")
this site: [http://www.ecogoods.com/Linens/Bedding/ecoNaturalBedroom.html](http://www.ecogoods.com/Linens/Bedding/ecoNaturalBedroom.html) says their pillows weigh about 1lb each. Theres around 2000lb in a ton depending on what lb and ton you use (Has typical grumble about backwards merkins). So imagine a pallet of pillows 20x10x10. Thats a ton of feathers. ---
**Author:** ![netscape\_6](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/8c91f0/32.png) [@netscape\_6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/netscape_6)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2003, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-cotton-balls-feathers-would-it-take-to-amount-to-a-ton/218319/4 "2003-12-11T17:21:45Z")
it depends on which is heavier, a ton of a feathers or a ton of cottonballs 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2003, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-cotton-balls-feathers-would-it-take-to-amount-to-a-ton/218319/5 "2003-12-11T17:38:17Z")
Since feathers have been covered, let’s do cotton balls now. A typical cotton ball masses about 1 gram. There are roughly 907,180 grams in a short ton (2000 lbs.), so we need that many cotton balls to make one ton of them. ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2003, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-cotton-balls-feathers-would-it-take-to-amount-to-a-ton/218319/6 "2003-12-11T20:35:59Z")
Or one really big one. Of either. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2003, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-cotton-balls-feathers-would-it-take-to-amount-to-a-ton/218319/7 "2003-12-11T21:56:42Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Doctor Jackson \* > \*\*Or one really big one. Of either. \*\* I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be anywhere near a bird that can moult a 2000 LBS. feather. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2003, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-cotton-balls-feathers-would-it-take-to-amount-to-a-ton/218319/8 "2003-12-11T22:00:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by adam yax \* > \*\*I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be anywhere near a bird that can moult a 2000 LBS. feather. \*\* Never mind that. No car cover in the world would help you here. ---
**Author:** ![Blayvis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b782af/32.png) [@Blayvis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blayvis)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2003, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-cotton-balls-feathers-would-it-take-to-amount-to-a-ton/218319/9 "2003-12-12T05:57:27Z")
I just can’t picture any amount of cotton balls or feathers being heavy. If it was a one ton cotton ball… since they breathe and everything… Couldn’t a gust of wind pretty much send the One Ton cotton ball on a path of destruction? :eek: :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2003, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-cotton-balls-feathers-would-it-take-to-amount-to-a-ton/218319/10 "2003-12-12T06:30:25Z")
**Blayvis** : One grain of sand is nearly massless, but get enough of them in one place and you end up with a hugely massive sand dune that can crush you if you somehow managed to get buried under one. It’s true that any individual grain can be blown around at will by any wind strong enough, but get me a wind strong enough to wear down a large dune quickly and I’ll show you a wind that could pick you up all by itself. About the one-ton cotton ball: It’s possible, of course, but it would _not_ be blown around by small gusts of wind. Remember that the wind still has to be able to lift one ton, and winds capable of doing that are rare. (Not impossible, but certainly not the norm in any region on Earth.) Making it a lifting body (which a cotton ball most assuredly is not) would help some, but not very much given the immense mass of the object. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2003, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-cotton-balls-feathers-would-it-take-to-amount-to-a-ton/218319/11 "2003-12-12T11:07:11Z")
I would correct **Derleth** slightly on the above reasoning. It is not the fact that your huge cotton ball _weighs_ a ton that is the problem. The reason that small cotton balls or grains of sand can be blown around, but giant bales of cotton and rocks cannot, is that as things get bigger, their surface area to mass ratio goes down, roughly proportionally to the inverse cube of the radius if we consider them to be spherical. A grain of sand has a huge surface area in relation to its mass, so the wind can easily move it around. A big boulder, on the other hand has a much bigger mass per square inch of surface area, so the pressure exerted by the wind (force per unit area) will not be enough to overcome the mass.