OMG, I was watching the news this evening and they showed a boulder falling onto the road, and nearly crushing a car in Taiwan (If the link doesn’t work search for boulder taiwan). It’s incredible! It looked like the boulder threw some other debris onto the road before it hit, and the debris pushed the car away from where it was, and then the boulder hit the road about where the car was. They were just lucky that the car wasn’t crushed by the boulder.
I did some rough calculations on how heavy the boulder might be. I assumed that the boulder was 4 meters high and about 6 meters on a side. for a total of 144 cubic meters. A cubic meter holds a million cubic centimeters, each weighing about 2.8 grams for rock. This comes to about 400 thousand kilograms, or close to 900 thousand pounds. My size guesstimate could have been low, and the boulder could have easily weighed a million pounds.
A million pound boulder would have squished the car like a bug underfoot. The boulder is right in the middle of the road, and it blocks most of the road. They are going to have to blast it into pieces for it to be moved.
Update Oct 25 ’13 – A commenter said that local news reports gave the size as 800 cubic meters or more than 2000 long tons. That’s more than four million pounds. My guesstimate was too conservative. But the result would bee the same: the car would have been flattened.
according to the local news report, that giant rocks was about 800 CBM, more than 2000 ton (1000kg = 1 ton)….
but later on, no confirmation
amazing anyway.
Looks like my guesstimate was too conservative. Thanks for the info.