A group of physics students at University of Leicester looks into children's favorite Bible story of Noah building a giant ark to help his family and the entire animal kingdom survive an immense flood.

According to Genesis 6:13-22, God commands Noah to build an ark that can hold himself, his family, and at least two of every animal species for the duration of the flood. The students based their calculations on a 1961 book, The Genesis Flood by creationists John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, which suggests that Noah would have needed to save approximately 35,000 species to re-populate Earth.

In order to calculate the overall downward force of the ark, the students needed to know the mass of the animals on board; previous research has suggested that the average mass of an animal is approximately equal to that of one sheep, 23.47kg (51.74lbs), which is the figure they used.

God also provides Noah exact dimensions for the ark by archaic measure based on the distance between the elbow and the tip of the middle finger -- 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high. He also commands the protagonist to build the boat out of "gopher wood." In order to calculate the weight of the empty ark, the students needed to know the density of the material the boat was constructed out of. Since there is no modern-day equivalent of gopher wood, they referred to the English translations of the Bible and used cypress wood instead.

Using these dimensions and suitable approximations, the students tested the instructions and were surprised with their results: "Our conclusions were that the ark would support the weight of 2.15 million sheep without sinking and that should be enough to support all of the species that were around at the time."

"You don't think of the Bible necessarily as a scientifically accurate source of information, so I guess we were quite surprised when we discovered it would work," said Thomas Morris, one of the students. "We're not proving that it's true, but the concept would definitely work."

The students added that while Noah's ark would have been buoyant, they are not sure if every animal would have fit inside.