When a mysterious 16.5-foot hole opened in Boston earlier this month, many residents cracked jokes about the cavity being another one of 2020’s mounting oddities, some reacted in awe of the discovery, and others worried about the possibility of people falling in. Yet one burning question remained:
How many medium iced coffees from New England’s favorite coffee chain would it take to fill it in?
“An important math lesson from your local Boston #archaeology team. Like many of you, we were wondering how many Dunkies medium iced coffees (extra extra) would [it] take to fill in the Mary L. Pierce well in Ronan Park, aka the #DorchesterSinkhole,” the City of Boston Archaeology Program tweeted Thursday morning. “Well, your wait is over.”
Officials calculated that the pit could fit a coffee supply that would last one Bostonian nearly 13 years.
An important math lesson from your local Boston #archaeology team. Like many of you, we were wondering how many Dunkies medium iced coffees (extra extra) would take to fill in the Mary L. Pierce well in Ronan Park, aka the #DorchesterSinkhole. Well, your wait is over. 1/ pic.twitter.com/qMuP1Bqrd4
— Boston Archaeology (@BostonArchaeo) December 17, 2020
A local resident stumbled upon the pit while walking through Dorchester’s Ronan Park in early December, after a heavy rain storm caused dirt to cave in and left the ground gaping open.
While the spot has since been called the Dorchester sinkhole, city officials determined it to actually be the remains of a 19th century well that was buried under 10 feet of fill used to make the park in the early 1910s.
At a press conference, Boston Parks Commissioner Ryan Woods and City Archaeologist Joe Bagley said the well was built around 1818 or 1872 on the property of Mary Pierce, who likely used it until her home received running water in the late 19th century and was then demolished in 1912 to make way for the park after the land had been sold to the city.
“Boston is an old city, with many mysteries still hiding under its surface,” Bagley said during the conference. “It’s amazing to see this piece of an old Dorchester estate in a park. Open wells are, fortunately, very uncommon.”
The well, which was made from unmortared field cobbles with cut granite slabs at its top, measures out to 2.5 feet wide, but Bagley estimated that it was once at least double its current depth.
In the wake of the discovery, Boston Archaeology took to social media to tackle the question of the well’s dimensions and just how much Dunkin’ it would take to fill it up.
Here’s how the city’s team broke down the math through a series of equations:
“Let’s start with the easy part. The well itself is 2.5 wide by 6.5 feet deep (it partially filled up with the dirt,” officials tweeted. “We all remember that the volume of a cylinder is πr²h. (That’s pronounced ‘pie-ah-sqwahd-aych’).”
After running through the calculations, and clarifying the hole as a conical frustum — or “a cone without the pointy bit,” — the team ended up with an approximate volume of 116.34 cubic feet.
“Now for the important part,” the archaeology program noted before dividing the volume of the hole by the size of a Dunkin’ medium iced coffee, 24 ounces or 0.025 cubic feet, and finding that approximately 4,653.6 cups of the beverage would fill the historic site. “Now you’re wicked smaht.”
“What else would it take to fill it?” Boston Archaeology added. “Does anyone know the volume of David Ortiz? Happy holidays. Go Pats!”
City officials said plans are underway to fill and re-seed the hole by the end of December, though archaeological team members have captured the site’s archaeological value through notes, photos, and videos.
Not quite a historical plaque, but it's something! #Masshole #RonanPark#Sinkhole pic.twitter.com/emSYKRxTT9
— Dorchester Sinkhole (@DotSinkhole) December 18, 2020
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How many Dunkin’ coffees would it take to fill the Dorchester sinkhole? These archaeologists did the math - Boston.com
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