MadSci Network: Earth Sciences
Query:

Re: How much physical space does a barrel of oil take, a ton of coal take?

Date: Tue Jun 15 00:28:50 2004
Posted By: Rob Campbell, Postdoctor researcher, Biological Oceanography
Area of science: Earth Sciences
ID: 1087210518.Es
Message:

Rhiannon:

The size of a barrel of oil can be found in this answer from our archives, estimates of the total amount of oil taken out of the ground in a year can be found with a web search.

To figure out how much physical space coal takes up (the volume it occupies), you need to know its density. According to this site, the density of coal varies between about 1.2 and 1.5 grams per cubic centimeter. You can multiply by 1000 to convert from grams/cc to kilograms per cubic meter. I'll leave finding out how much coal is mined in a year to you (again, try a web search); to calculate the volume occupied by a certain mass of coal, just divide the mass by the density to get the volume. For instance 10000 kg of Anthracite coal, at 1.554 g/cc (x 1000 equals 1554 kg/cubic meter) will take up about 6.43 cubic meters (10000 ÷ 1554). (Admin note: 1000 kg is a metric ton or "tonne". It is nearly the same size as an American ton -- 2204 lb. compared with 2240 lb. So for "10000 kg" you may read "ten tons")

The numbers that you get will be very large, and that's a great idea to make up "fun units" that will convert the numbers you get to something that people can relate to. To do that, estimate the volume of something large that people can relate to (your classroom, like you suggested, or maybe a school bus, a house, your school, etc), and divide the amount of coal, oil, etc extracted by that volume.
For example, pretend you calculate that ten thousand cubic meters of coal is mined every year (the real number will be much bigger than that). That's not a very easy thing to visualize, so we'll convert it into school buses. You'll want to measure your classroom (or whatever you use), but for the purposes of this example we'll say a school bus is something like 15 meters by 2 meters by 2 meters. It's volume is therefore 15 x 2 x 2 = 60 cubic meters. So, for the purposes of our example, 10000 cubic meters of coal is equivalent to a little over 166 school buses (10000 cubic meters ÷ 60 cubic meters per school bus).

I hope that helps, and best of luck with your assignment!
Rob Campbell, MAD Scientist


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