U.P. Math: How Long to Zamboni all of Lake Superior?
It's been a long winter in Michigan. So long, that we're starting to come up with new winter sports, like extreme Zamboni driving.
How long would it take to Zamboni all of Lake Superior?
This is the kind of question that never gets asked until we're all stuck in the middle of a historically bizarre winter. Our cold winter has Lake Superior more frozen-over than usual and all of those school snow days have some people itching to keep their math skills sharp with a ridiculous story problem.
U.P. Supply Co. breaks down the math on how long it would take to Zamboni a completely frozen Lake Superior (a rare sight, but we're not too far off right now):
- Lake Superior is 31,700 square miles.
- A standard North American ice rink is 17,000 square feet.
- Lake Superior = 52,020,513 ice rinks.
- A single Zamboni machine takes approximately 7 minutes to resurface a standard North American ice rink.
- It would take 364,143,591 minutes to Zamboni all of Lake Superior. That's 252,877 days or 693 years.
Looking forward to the U.P. hosting the Winter Olympics in 2712!