{"id":303,"date":"2025-11-06T12:37:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T12:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sausagesplanet.com\/?p=303"},"modified":"2025-11-08T02:18:02","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T02:18:02","slug":"nice-thought-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sausagesplanet.com\/?p=303","title":{"rendered":"Nice Thought Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"

How many sausages would you need to throw into the ocean to raise sea level one inch?<\/p>\n

Assumptions I\u2019ll use:<\/p>\n

Ocean area \u2248 3.61\u00d710^8 km\u00b2 = 3.61\u00d710^14 m\u00b2.<\/p>\n

Raise by 1 inch = 0.0254 m.<\/p>\n

A typical sausage \u2248 cylinder 10 cm long \u00d7 2.5 cm diameter (0.10 m \u00d7 0.025 m).<\/p>\n

Sausage volume = \u03c0\u00b7r\u00b2\u00b7h, density \u2248 1000 kg\/m\u00b3 (water-like).<\/p>\n

Calculation (numbers rounded sensibly):<\/p>\n

Extra ocean volume = area \u00d7 height = 3.61\u00d710^14 m\u00b2 \u00d7 0.0254 m \u2248 9.1694\u00d710^12 m\u00b3.<\/p>\n

Sausage volume = \u03c0\u00b7(0.0125 m)\u00b2\u00b70.10 m \u2248 4.9087\u00d710^-5 m\u00b3.<\/p>\n

Number of sausages = 9.1694\u00d710^12 m\u00b3 \u00f7 4.9087\u00d710^-5 m\u00b3 \u2248 1.87\u00d710^17 sausages.<\/p>\n

So you\u2019d need on the order of 1.9\u00d710^17 sausages (about 190 quadrillion sausages).
\nMass equivalent (for scale):<\/p>\n

Mass per sausage \u2248 0.0491 kg \u2192 total mass \u2248 9.17\u00d710^15 kg \u2248 9.17\u00d710^12 metric tonnes.<\/p>\n

Short takeaway: unimaginably huge \u2014 hundreds of quadrillions of sausages, weighing trillions of tonnes. Even with very different sausage sizes you\u2019d still need on the order of 10^15\u201310^18 sausages.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How many sausages would you need to throw into the ocean to raise sea level one inch? Assumptions I\u2019ll use: Ocean area \u2248 3.61\u00d710^8 km\u00b2 = 3.61\u00d710^14 m\u00b2. Raise by 1 inch = 0.0254 m. A typical sausage \u2248 cylinder 10 cm long \u00d7 2.5 cm diameter (0.10 m \u00d7 0.025 m). Sausage volume = […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sausagesplanet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sausagesplanet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sausagesplanet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sausagesplanet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sausagesplanet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sausagesplanet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306,"href":"https:\/\/www.sausagesplanet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions\/306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sausagesplanet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sausagesplanet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sausagesplanet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sausagesplanet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}