5 ms·

I just want to know how many Olympic sized swimming pools we could fill with all these ants.

by doodlebugging 4y ago

m3kw9 4y ago
Crushed or live?
- exitb 4y ago
  I wonder if it’s even possible to fill an Olympic-sized pool with ants without crushing the ones near the bottom.
  - zimpenfish 4y ago
    A column of ants 2M high would be about 1000 ants (assuming 2mm height for an ant). According to [1], ants range from 1mg to 150mg(!) but most commonly 5-10mg - call it 8mg as an average and your bottom ant would be supporting about 8 grams over an area of (I assumed in another comment) 9x4mm or 36mm^2 to give about (if I'm operating [2] correctly) about 0.3psi. [3] suggests that ants can lift about 5000x their own weight which should mean the bottom ant would not only be fine but could probably carry the 2M column around without any trouble... [1] https://whatthingsweigh.com/how-much-does-an-ant-weigh/ https://whatthingsweigh.com/how-much-does-an-ant-weigh/ [2] https://www.sensorsone.com/force-and-area-to-pressure-calculator/ https://www.sensorsone.com/force-and-area-to-pressure-calcul... [3] https://entomologytoday.org/2014/02/11/ants-can-lift-up-to-5000-times-their-own-body-weight-new-study-suggests/ https://entomologytoday.org/2014/02/11/ants-can-lift-up-to-5...
m3kw9 4y ago
According to this link and size of the pool is 2500m3. It comes out to around 54,000 pools to fit roughly 40 quadrillion 3mm sized ants. https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/4mohnd/request_how_many_ants_would_it_take_to_fill_an/?s=8 https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/4mohnd/requ...
zimpenfish 4y ago
If you say 9x4x3mm for an ant's volume (wild guesstimate based off carpenter ants) (which is way off for most species since they range in size from 0.75 to 52mm[1]) and an Olympic swimming pool as 50x25x2m[2], you get the pool as 2500000000000mm^2 and the ant as 108mm^2 giving an approximate count of 23150000000 or twenty three billion, one hundred and fifty million ants. Which means you'd need about 863931 pools to hold them all at that carpenter size - round up and call it 1.25M pools to hold all the world's population? [1] https://pestsamurai.com/ant-size-chart-and-comparison/ https://pestsamurai.com/ant-size-chart-and-comparison/ [2] https://phinizycenter.org/olympic-swimming-pools/ https://phinizycenter.org/olympic-swimming-pools/
- googlryas 4y ago
  And for reference, 863,931 olympic pools if built in a square would be about 50km long by 25km wide
jp57 4y ago
Assume a spherical ant...

I just want to know how many Olympic sized swimming pools we could fill with all these ants.

m3kw9 4y ago

Crushed or live?

exitb 4y ago
I wonder if it’s even possible to fill an Olympic-sized pool with ants without crushing the ones near the bottom.
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  A column of ants 2M high would be about 1000 ants (assuming 2mm height for an ant). According to [1], ants range from 1mg to 150mg(!) but most commonly 5-10mg - call it 8mg as an average and your bottom ant would be supporting about 8 grams over an area of (I assumed in another comment) 9x4mm or 36mm^2 to give about (if I'm operating [2] correctly) about 0.3psi. [3] suggests that ants can lift about 5000x their own weight which should mean the bottom ant would not only be fine but could probably carry the 2M column around without any trouble... [1] https://whatthingsweigh.com/how-much-does-an-ant-weigh/ https://whatthingsweigh.com/how-much-does-an-ant-weigh/ [2] https://www.sensorsone.com/force-and-area-to-pressure-calculator/ https://www.sensorsone.com/force-and-area-to-pressure-calcul... [3] https://entomologytoday.org/2014/02/11/ants-can-lift-up-to-5000-times-their-own-body-weight-new-study-suggests/ https://entomologytoday.org/2014/02/11/ants-can-lift-up-to-5...

m3kw9 4y ago

According to this link and size of the pool is 2500m3. It comes out to around 54,000 pools to fit roughly 40 quadrillion 3mm sized ants. https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/4mohnd/request_how_many_ants_would_it_take_to_fill_an/?s=8 https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/4mohnd/requ...

zimpenfish 4y ago

If you say 9x4x3mm for an ant's volume (wild guesstimate based off carpenter ants) (which is way off for most species since they range in size from 0.75 to 52mm[1]) and an Olympic swimming pool as 50x25x2m[2], you get the pool as 2500000000000mm^2 and the ant as 108mm^2 giving an approximate count of 23150000000 or twenty three billion, one hundred and fifty million ants. Which means you'd need about 863931 pools to hold them all at that carpenter size - round up and call it 1.25M pools to hold all the world's population? [1] https://pestsamurai.com/ant-size-chart-and-comparison/ https://pestsamurai.com/ant-size-chart-and-comparison/ [2] https://phinizycenter.org/olympic-swimming-pools/ https://phinizycenter.org/olympic-swimming-pools/

googlryas 4y ago
And for reference, 863,931 olympic pools if built in a square would be about 50km long by 25km wide

jp57 4y ago

Assume a spherical ant...