Apollo Discussions > The Hoax Theory

15 miles of wire: guess the volume

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Chew:
What is your gut intuitive guess for the volume occupied by 15 miles of wire? Assume 26 AWG (.405 mm diameter) and the insulation is as thick as the wire itself; e.g. the total diameter is 1.215 mm.

I guessed before I calculated it and I was way off.

DataCable:
210 cubic feet.

Valis:
I didn't get any intuitive grasp of the volume, so I did an order of magnitude calculation in my head. The process is something like this:

15 miles is roughly 24 km (10*1.6=16, add half of that and it's 24).
The area of a cross-section for the wire is about 3*0.6^2, or 3*0.36, or about 1 mm^2, which is 10^-6 m^2.
Finally, the volume is 24*10^3*10^-6 = 0.024 (m^3), or 24 liters. That's the lower estimate, so my guesstimate would be less than 30 l, which would be a bit over one cubic feet.

Echnaton:
My top of the head estimations came out this way 15 miles X 1.6 gives about 24 KM of wire.  If wire was say 1 mm in diameter then 1000 strands could be laid side to side within 1 meter. If it were in 1 m long cuts, then 1 km of wire would be 1000 pieces or 1/1000 of a m3.  So the whole thing would be 24/1000 of a m3.   


So with wire at 1.2 mm my guess is it would be about 1.2^2 * 24 or about 36/1000 cubic meters  A web site tells me that is about 1.25 cubic feet. 

Ranb:
I got .99 cubic feet using the volume of a cylinder 0.0478 inches wide by 15 miles high.  I wasn't going to guess this one; I used a calulator.

Ranb

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