What-If 0144: "Saliva Pool"

[Soupspoon]

Saliva Pool
How long would it take for a single person to fill up an entire swimming pool with their own saliva?
—Mary Griffin, 9th grade




My most random thought about:

I suppose you can make a pool that continues through to the other side of the Earth, but then you run into trouble when you try to follow the instructions in section FR 2.14 about painting lane markings on the bottom.

...is: Does anybody have a Gungun Sub handy?

[HES]

Why is she standing in the pool?

[Soupspoon]

Why is she standing in the pool?

So she doesn't accidentally dribble on the poolside. Because that would be disgusting.

[gsilverfish]

Displacing liquid in order to get it filled up just slightly faster?

How much longer would this take if evaporation was taken into account?

[Flumble]

You may call it an Olympic-size swimming pool, but it definitely needs to be at least 2m deep (preferably >3m) before an Olympic or world championship may take place. This is mostly because of reflecting waves slowing you down.
So keep on drooling for a couple of millenia and we may consider you neighbourhood for the Olympic games.

Oh, right, saliva probably violates some of FINA's requirements regarding visibility and sanitation/acidicity.

How much longer would this take if evaporation was taken into account?

How much shorter would it take if we take bacteria growth into account?

[Pfhorrest]

How much longer would this take if evaporation was taken into account?

How much shorter would it take if we take bacteria growth into account?

Yeah, that's where I thought this was going to go, and I was disappointed it didn't. While you're standing there for 8ish Ka drooling into the pool... and I guess we'll just let you be immortal, and not have any other bodily functions that would make this question even grosser... what else would happen to impede or enhance the accumulation of saliva in the pool? I assume we don't want the pool just filling with rainwater, or getting covered in glaciers, so we'll have to cover it and pick the right location, and then account for weather and climate and biology and so on over those thousands of years.

[sevenperforce]

I was hoping he'd go through a "if we relax the 'single person' requirement, then what logistics are we looking at?" bit.

[Soupspoon]

I was hoping he'd go through a "if we relax the 'single person' requirement, then what logistics are we looking at?" bit.

Just eight thousand or so of your closest friends spitting into the pool for a calendar year?

(I'm sure there's a 4chan/insert-similar joke in there somewhere.)

[wumpus]

Honestly, I was expecting a squirrel picture.

[Neil_Boekend]

You'd also have to remove evaporation.

[cellocgw]

"eeewwwwwww GROSS" just begins to cover it. The concept is so yucky that even today, maybe 40 yrs after reading a book which includes a supporting character who saves his spit in a jar, I'm grossed out.

[yakkoTDI]

I was hoping he'd go through a "if we relax the 'single person' requirement, then what logistics are we looking at?" bit.

You mean 'What if we tried more power?'

[rudeeric]

This reminded me of a joke I remember hearing when I was young (around 1972--yes, I'm old!):

"How do they fill the swimming pools for the Olympics?"

"Mark Spitz."

[sallabra]

Displacing liquid in order to get it filled up just slightly faster?

How much longer would this take if evaporation was taken into account?

I just created an account just for posting this exact comment. And then I read yours. Damn

[carrion pigeons]

I was interested in learning what the consequences of standing in digestive juices for millenia would be.

[rmsgrey]

I was interested in learning what the consequences of standing in digestive juices for millenia would be.

Not all digestive juices are created equal - stomach acids would get a much clearer result; saliva would probably just make you prune up...

[musashi1600]

It would take a long time, sure. But it would all be worth it, because at the end of it all, you'd have an Olympic-size swimming pool full of saliva. And isn't that, deep down, all any of us really want?

Somebody has been reading Mysterious Girlfriend X.

[Zak3056]

Disappointed in this one... one obviously unexplored scenario was using 17,000 five years olds and doing it in a year, or using all the five year olds in, say, California and doing it in a day

[gbleck]

Interesting...

Study on Surface Tension and Evaporation Rate of Human Saliva, Saline, and Water Droplets
by Zhang, Tian, M.S., WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY, 2011

Someone has done this research. Could be useful for CPAP designs maybe?