Why Little Drops of Water won’t make a Mighty Ocean.

It is true that some big things have small beginnings. That is why people say: “little drops of water make a mighty ocean”. But have you wondered, if an ocean can be formed from drops of water, how long it will take? Probably, centuries, right? Or a couple of millenniums. I guess you don’t really know.

As you know, our planet has five oceans, each having a volume different from the other, but it is generally accepted that an ocean contains between 1.3 to 1.5 billion cubic kilometres of salt water. Then, let’s take the volume of our ocean as 1.4 billion Km³. Meanwhile, a drop of water is 0.05 mL in volume. Assuming water is collected at a drop-per-second, which is 0.05 mL per second. Then, in a whole day we will get 4,320 mL of water and after 365 days (i.e. 1 year) we must have gotten 1,576,800 mL --- just a mere 1.5768 cubic meter.

Now, let’s speed things up by determining the quantity of water that will be collected after a century. That is: 100 ӿ 1.577 m³ to give 157.7 m³. This is not enough, especially when you are dealing with a billion cubic kilometres and more. Ok. Say you manage to travel in time to a millennium in the future; you’ll discover that our grand project has grown to 1,577 Km³. But nobody lives for a thousand years.

Let’s say you plan to “live forever” then you’ll live to see your little drops of water make an ocean after 887,761 millenniums. So, lemme ask you. Are you willing to allow that your great plan to last for this long before it’s accomplished? I don’t think so.