Today in class we are calculating how much it would cost to make Lake Michigan as salty as the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve been hyping this up for several days now, and it’s finally here.
The total volume of Lake Michigan is 1180 cubic miles.
The weight of 1 cubic mile of water is 9,189,267,927,941.6 pounds.
The weight of Lake Michigan in pounds is: 1180 * 9,189,267,927,941.6 …
That equals: 1.0843336155*10^16 pounds of water
—Y’all, that’s a lot of water—
The salinity of the Atlantic is 25.5 parts per thousand or 3.3% of the mass.
The necessary mass of salt to make Lake Michigan as salty as the Atlantic is: 1.0843336155*10^16 *0.034. 1
That equals: 3.6867342927*10^15 pounds of salt
In other words: 1,843,367,146,400 tons of salt
—Y’all, that’s a lot of salt—
The cost of rock salt is approximately $60-80 per ton; we’ll use the average.2
The cost of the total salt needed would be: $70 * 1,843,367,146,400
That equals: $129,035,700,250,000 or approximately 129 trillion dollars.
To put that into perspective, the total US national debt is approximately 36.85 trillion dollars, and the total debt owed in the US is 103.8 trillion dollars.
—Y’all, that’s a lot of money—
The total amount of salt produced worldwide in 2023 was 270,000,000 metric tons).3
Years to produce enough salt to make Lake Michigan as salty as the Atlantic Ocean: 1,843,367,146,400 / 270,000,000
That equals: 6827.3 years.
—That’s a long time—
I hate to say this, but I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to make Lake Michigan as salty as the Atlantic Ocean, especially because I didn’t factor in transportation or labor costs.
Footnotes
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I spent way too long figuring out that I needed this and not 0.033 to create the correct final number. ↩
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I’m not 100% sure that this salt would actually work, but at the same time, it seems at least plausible. This is also a live webpage, and cost estimates may vary depending on when you’re visiting. ↩
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The originally published version of this piece made inexplicable claims about world salt production that were not supported by the given sources. I have hopefully corrected the relevant errors and cited the original source, rather than Statista. Speaking of that source, the US Geological Service helpfully notes that salt is a virtually inexhaustible resource due to the existence of the ocean, and to that I say: dream bigger lol ↩