Thin As A Piece of Paper

Just found out that the oceans are so thin; they are just as thin as a piece of paper.

Oceanic dimensions range from around 1500 km for the minimum width of the Atlantic to more than 13,000 km for the north-south extent of the Atlantic and the width of the Pacific. Typical depths are only 3-4 km. So horizontal dimensions of ocean basins are 1,000 times greater than the vertical dimension. A scale model of the Pacific, the size of an 8.5 x 11 in sheet of paper, would have dimensions similar to the paper: a width of 10,000 km scales to 10 in, and a depth of 3 km scales to 0.003 in, the typical thickness of a piece of paper.

Taken from Introduction To Physical Oceanography by Robert H. Stewart (Department of Oceanography, Texas A & M University) September 2005 Edition, page 24.