• Question: how many grains of sand in the world

    Asked by to Andrei, Ekbal, Gemma, Helen, Ruth on 18 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ekbal Hussain

      Ekbal Hussain answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      Hi,

      This is actually quite a fun question to answer. In reality no one actually knows the right answer to this. it’s like asking, how many drops of water are there in the oceans!

      But let’s take a stab at answering it:
      – Let’s assume all sand grains are little balls that are about half a millimetre wide.
      – So in a metre cube box you will have 70 billion grains of sand.
      – Now, let’s say that only about 5 per cent of the Earth’s surface is made of sand.
      – This gives us a rough estimate of around 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 grains of sand ….

      That’s a LOT!

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