• Question: how long does it take for a snail to travel 1 mile

    Asked by azazaa to Arlene, Colin, David, Eugene, Paul on 13 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: David McKeown

      David McKeown answered on 13 Nov 2012:

      Brilliant!

      Finally I get to use my engineering skills 🙂

      So according to “The World Almanac and Book of Facts” a snail moves a 0.03 miles per hour. So 1 mile would take 33.333 hours (1mile/0.03mph = 33.333 hours), which is about 1.38 days!

    • Photo: Paul Higgins

      Paul Higgins answered on 13 Nov 2012:

      I was going to estimate snails move half a centimeter per second, which would be .01 meters/second times by 3600 seconds/hour = 36 meters/hour. Then multiply that by 1 kilometer/1000 meters times 0.6 miles/kilometer = 0.02 miles per hour. That is 2/3 what David says, so not too bad! (if I did the math right) But, really, do snails ever go in a straight line? I bet snails never travel a mile away from where they are born. We should stick a GPS on a snail and see how far it travels…

    • Photo: Colin Johnston

      Colin Johnston answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      About a fifth of a second (if it’s on the International Space Station travelling at 7.7 km/s).

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