• Question: if our lungs can spread across a tennis court how many tennis courts can a blue whale's lungs spread across

    Asked by anon-174191 to Alex, Carl, Hayley, Melanie, Tim, Yewande on 15 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Alex Seeney

      Alex Seeney answered on 15 Jun 2018:

      Very cool question! I don’t know the exact answer, but I’ll have a go at working it out!

      Human lungs have a lung capacity of about 6 litres. The blue whale has a lung capacity of about 5000 litres. That means a blue whale has a lung volume thats about 833 times greater than ours!

      We could say then then they would take up about 833 tennis courts, but that really depends on their surface area, which is a two dimensional measurement, and we’re talking about volume, which is a three dimensional measurement. The actual answer might be a bit different to my estimate 🙂

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