A Lesson in Population Density

On yesterday's drive to music lessons, Austin and Keonho were talking about the 2010 winter Olympics. Keonho asked if we went to any events, or if we watched any programming on TV. Austin told Keonho what he had watched, and Keonho particularly remembered the South Korean figure skater who won Gold.

Austin talked about Joannie Rochette, and Keonho recalled that she had lost her mother. Austin said, "Yes, only days before she had to perform in front of the world." Austin was clearly impacted by Joannie Rochette's story.He's quite sensitive to what she went through, and what she was able to overcome. He is so proud of her for winning a bronze medal.

Austin talked about Canada's gold medals, and how we broke an Olympic record for the number of gold medals won. Keonho remarked that it's understandable that Canada would be able to win so many gold medals, because there must be so many more Canadians than Koreans, since Canada is such a bigger country.

Then, the conversation really got interesting. I responded that, actually, Korea's population is higher than Canada's. Keonho was perplexed ... how could that be? Canada must be at least 50 times as big as South Korea! So I passed my iPhone to Austin and asked him to google "South Korea population," and he said, 48,607,000. Then, he looked up the population of Canada, which is 33,311,400.

Out of interest, later last night, I looked up the area of South Korea, and found it is 98,799 sq km. Canada's area is 9,093,507 sq km. So, 92 South Koreas could fit into Canada!

Then, I worked out how many people, on average, live in one square kilometre of each country. In South Korea, it is 492, and in Canada it is under 4! So, I told Austin and Keonho what I had learned, and as Skye suggested, I used Panorama Park as a suggestion of an area of land which is about 500 sq m, and compared South Korea (246) to Canada (2). It was really remarkable to imagine such a difference in population density between the countries.