Would Noah's Ark Fit on Your Street?

If Noah was alive today, and building his ark, could he build it on your street? Would it fit? That, was our science question for the day, though in the end it turned into more of a math question, because of all the measuring involved.

First, we found the measurements for the ark in Genesis 6:15. It was 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high (if you're a cubit fan, you'll have to multiply the cubits out by 18 inches, and then divide the number by 12, to get feet). Then, we went outside to do some measuring.

I thought about having the children run a pre-measured piece of string down the street, but 450 feet of string seemed like a lot to have to wind back up, when we were done. So instead, we used a laser meter. Unfortunately, outside in the daylight, we couldn't measure very far with it, so we had to break our measurements down.

We decided to start by measuring squares on our sidewalk, and then counted the number of squares down the straight part of our street, and multiplied it out.

Can you see the kids at the far end of the street? They were standing 340 feet away. So, the straight part of our street is 110 feet too short for the ark to sit on. Noah would have to take a few houses out, for the sake of length.

But, we discovered the width of the ark was about right to run down our street, just touching the fronts of the houses on each side.

And finally, we figured out the ark would stand about twice as tall as our house.

It was a big boat. And now, every time we walk out our front door, or drive down our street, we'll be reminded of just how big it really was.

It's great to be a homeschooler.