Book: A Short History of Nearly Everything

Finished Jennings' book on maps and mapping (excellent), and in it he recommended this book by Bill Bryson (2003).

It is, in short, an updated "Connections" by James Burke -- an explanation, in layman's language, of what we know and why we know it. It's a big book (542 pages) but so far the first 69 pages are great. Very clear and readable. This is my kind of book - "Science For Dummies."

NoCoPilot wrote:

Bill Bryson wrote:

if Earth were perfectly smooth, it would be covered everywhere with water to a depth of four kilometers.  There might be life in that lonesome ocean, but there certainly wouldn't be baseball.

Mr. Bryson should check his math. But he's dead on about the baseball. That wouldn't bother me, but there wouldn't be any basketball, and that would be a loss.

_Howard wrote:

Mr. Bryson should check his math.

You got alternative math?

A quick and dirty calculation gives 2.7 kilometers. This isn't accurate, but close enough to indicate that Bryson's number is not very close.

There are about 1.396 billion cubic kilometers of water on Earth. Earth's surface area is about 510 million square kilometers. If Earth was flat, that would give a depth of water of 2.73 kilometers. As a sphere, of course, the depth would be somewhat less.

If my calculation is wrong, please let me know where I screwed up.

Why would a sphere be less?

Your calcs appear accurate -- LiveSciences says 1.332 billion instead of 1.396 billion, but that just bolsters your argument. It isn't clear if that includes underground aquifers.
http://m.livescience.com/29673-how-much-water-on-earth.html

Incidentally the Christians agree with you:
http://christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-floodwater.html

NoCoPilot wrote:

Why would a sphere be less?

The depth would be less on a sphere because the area of the sphere increases as the diameter increases with the addition of the water height.

Not much!

No, not much. Certainly not enough for me to calculate it. Yes, you're right; I'm lazy.