Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1898 — A Comparison of Sea and Land. [ARTICLE]

A Comparison of Sea and Land.

The triviality of the sea compared with the land is the theme of a recent article by John Holt Schooling. A bucket 743 miles deep and 743 miles from sides to side would hold every drop of the ocean. This bucket could rest quite firmly on the British Isles. To fill the bucket one would need to work 10,000 steam pumps, each sucking up 1,000 tons of sea per second, for 422 years. So if any one wants to be rid of the sea, the way is plain. But to get rid of the earth would be 4.555 times more difficult, requiring 2,000 great guns, each firing 1,000 projectiles a second, each projectile consisting of 100,000 tons of earth. At the end of 1,000 years this mundane sphere would be all shot away.