How Many Oreo Cookies Does It Take to Cover the Entire Us Land Mass

Admin · May 4, 2025

Have you ever wondered how many Oreo cookies it would take to completely cover the land area of the United States? Spoiler alert: It’s not millions, or billions—it’s trillions. Actually… quadrillions.

To figure it out, all we need are two simple things:

The total land area of the U.S. (in square feet), and
The surface area of one Oreo cookie (also in square feet)

Then, we divide the land area by the cookie area—and voilà, we get our answer. Let's check out how to solve the question!

How Big Is the U.S.?

The land area of the United States is about 3.8 million square miles.

But since Oreos are small, we need to convert square miles to square feet to make the math work.

1 square mile = 27,878,400 square feet

So:

3.8 million × 27,878,400 = 105,937,920,000,000 square feet

That’s over 105 trillion square feet!

How Big Is an Oreo?

A standard Oreo cookie has a diameter of about 1.85 inches. To cover land, we’ll lay them flat, like tiny circular tiles.

To calculate the area of a circle:

Area = π × radius²
Radius = 1.85 ÷ 2 = 0.925 inches

So:

Area ≈ 3.14 × (0.925)² ≈ 3.14 × 0.855 ≈ 2.68 square inches

Now convert that to square feet:

1 square foot = 144 square inches
2.68 ÷ 144 ≈ 0.0186 square feet

Each Oreo covers about 0.0186 square feet

How Many Oreos Would it take to cover the United States?

Now it’s time to divide the land area by the size of one Oreo:

105,937,920,000,000 ÷ 0.0186 ≈ 5,697,634,408,602,151 Oreos

That’s about 5.697 quadrillion Oreos.

Since this number is so large, we can round it for simplicity. That gives us a clean estimate of:

Answer: It would take about 5.7 quadrillion Oreo cookies to cover the entire U.S. land mass!

That’s:

5,700,000,000,000,000 Oreos

OREO actually used this exact question in their U.S. Land Mass Sweepstakes, where they’re inviting fans to guess the answer from three choices for a chance to win a $1,000 cash prize.