Facts about Water
Gathered by Sun Star
www.sunstock.com
The most common substance found on earth is water. Water is the only substance found naturally in three forms: solid, liquid and gas.
The amount of water is constant and recycled throughout time; actually, it is possible to drink water that was part of the dinosaur era.
Eighty percent of the earth's surface is water.
Ninety-seven percent of the earth's water is saltwater in oceans and seas. Of the 3% that is freshwater, only 1% is available for drinking – the remaining 2% is frozen in the polar ice caps.
Water serves as nature's thermometer, helping to regulate the earth's temperature.
Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, 0 degrees Celsius.
Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, 100 degrees Celsius.
Once evaporated, a water molecule spends ten days in the air.
Forty trillion gallons of water a day are carried in the atmosphere across the United States.
An acre of corn gives off 4000 gallons of water per day in evaporation.
Forty percent of the atmosphere's moisture falls as precipitation each day.
It would take 1.1 trillion gallons of water to cover one square mile with one foot of water.
One gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds; one cubic foot contains 7.84 gallons of water.
People need about 2.5 quarts of water a day (from drinking and eating) to maintain good health. A person can live without water for approximately one week, depending upon the conditions.
While usage varies from community to community and person to person, on average, Americans use 183 gallons of water a day for cooking, washing, flushing, and watering purposes. The average family turns on the tap between 70 and 100 times daily.
About 74% of home water usage is in the bathroom, about 21% is for laundry and cleaning, and about 5% is in the kitchen.
A clothes washer uses about 50 gallons of water (the permanent press cycle uses an additional 15 gallons).
It takes 12 to 20 gallons of water to run an automatic dishwasher for one cycle.
About 2 gallons of water are used to brush our teeth.
Flushing a toilet requires 2 to 7 gallons of water.
A 10-minute shower can take 25-50 gallons of water. High flow shower heads spew water out at 6-10 gallons a minute. Low Flow shower heads can cut the rate in half without reducing pressure.
About 25-50 gallons are needed for a tub bath.
A typical garden hose can deliver 50 gallons of water in just 5 minutes.
It takes about four times the amount of water to produce food and fiber than all other uses of water combined.
About 4000 gallons of water are needed to grow one bushel of corn, 11,000 gallons to grow one bushel of wheat, and about 135,000 gallons to grow one ton of alfalfa.
It takes about 1000 gallons of water to grow the wheat to make a two pound loaf of bread, and about 120 gallons to produce one egg.
About 1400 gallons of water are used to produce a meal of a quarter-pound hamburger, an order of fries and a soft drink.
About 48,000 gallons are needed to produce the typical American Thanksgiving dinner for eight people.
About 1800 gallons of water are needed to produce the cotton in a pair of jeans, and 400 gallons to produce the cotton in a shirt.
It takes 39,000 gallons of water to produce the average domestic auto, including tires.
Producing an average-size Sunday newspaper requires about 150 gallons of water.
Water makes up almost two-thirds of the human body, and seventy percent of the brain.
Four hundred gallons of water are recycled through our kidneys each day.
Water makes up 80% of an earthworm, 70% of a chicken, and 70% of an elephant.
Water makes up 90% of a tomato, 80% of pineapples and corn, and 70% of a tree.
About 60,000 public water systems across the United States process 34 billion gallons of water per day for home and commercial use. Eighty-five percent of the population is served by these facilities. The remaining 15 percent rely on 13 million private.
It can take up to 45 minutes for a water supplier to produce one glass of drinking water.
You can refill an 8 oz. glass of water approximately 15,000 times for the same cost as a six pack of soda pop. And, water has no sugar or caffeine.
An average of 800,000 water wells are drilled each year in the United States. That's tapping into our underground water supplies at approximately 100 times each hour for domestic, farming, and commercial needs.
The United States and Canada have about one million miles of pipelines and aqueducts – enough to circle the planet 40 times.
Quotes
Water is the best of all things.
– Pindar (C. 522-C. 438 B.C.), Olympian Odes
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.
– Loran Eisely, The Immense Journey, 1957
All the water that will ever be is, right now.
– National Geographic, October 1993
If you gave me several million years, there would be nothing that did not grow in beauty if it were surrounded by water.
– Jan Erik Vold, What All The World Knows, 1970
Water is H20, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing that makes water and nobody knows what that is.
– D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), Pansies, 1929
Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses.
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944), Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939
{Water is} the one substance from which the earth can conceal nothing; it sucks out its innermost secrets and brings them to our very lips.
– Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944), The Madwomen of Chaillot, 1946
When the well's dry, we know the worth of water.
– Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Poor Richard's Almanac, 1746
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The crisis of our diminishing water resources is just as severe (if less obviously immediate) as any wartime crisis we have ever faced. Our survival is just as much at stake as it was at the time of Pearl Harbor, or the Argonne, or Gettysburg, or Saratoga.
– Jim Wright, U.S. Representative, The Coming Water Famine, 1966
High quality water is more than the dream of the conservationists, more than a political slogan; high quality water, in the right quantity at the right place at the right time, is essential to health, recreation, and economic growth. Of all our planet's activities–geological movements, the reproduction and decay of biota, and even the disruptive propensities of certain species (elephants and humans come to mind) — no force is greater than the hydrologic cycle.
– Richard Bangs and Christian Kallen, Rivergods, 1985
Between earth and earth's atmosphere, the amount of water remains constant; there is never a drop more, never a drop less. This is a story of circular infinity, of a planet birthing itself.
– Linda Hogan, "Northern Lights," Autumn 1990
Filthy water cannot be washed.
– West African Proverb
If you could tomorrow morning make water clean in the world, you would have done, in one fell swoop, the best thing you could have done for improving human health by improving environmental quality.
– William C. Clark, speech, Racine, Wisconsin, April 1988
In every glass of water we drink, some of the water has already passed through fishes, trees, bacteria, worms in the soil, and many other organisms, including people. . . Living systems cleanse water and make it fit, among other things, for human consumption.
– Elliot A. Norse, in R.J. Hoage, ed., Animal Extinctions, 1985
{Chesapeake Bay is} an immense outdoor protein factory.
– H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), Happy Days, 1940
Estuaries are a happy land, rich in the continent itself, stirred by the forces of nature like the soup of a French chef; the home of myriad forms of life from bacteria and protozoans to grasses and mammals; the nursery, resting place, and refuge of countless things.
– Stanely A. Cain, speech, 1966
Many estuaries produce more harvestable human food per acre than the best midwestern farmland.
– Stanely A. Cain, testimony, U.S. House of Representatives, Merchant Marine and Fisheries subcomittee, March 1967
{The estuary} is the point where man, the sea–his immemorial ally and adversary–and the land meet and challenge each other.
– U.S. Department of the Interior, National Estuarine Pollution Study, November 1969
Life originated in the sea, and about eighty percent of it is still there.
– Isaac Aasimov, Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988
The oceans are the planet's last great living wilderness, man's only remaining frontier on earth, and perhaps his last chance to produce himself a rational species.
– John L. Cullney, "Wilderness Conservation," September-October 1990
The marsh, to him who enters it in a receptive mood, holds, besides mosquitoes and stagnation, melody, the mystery of unknown waters, and the sweetness of Nature undisturbed by man.
– Charles William Beebe (1877-1962), Log of the Sun, 1906
Only those people that have directly experienced the wetlands that line the shore. . . can appreciate their mystic qualities. The beauty of rising mists at dusk, the ebb and flow of the tides, the merging of fresh and salt waters, the turmoil of wind and rain.
– Governor's Task Force on Marine and Coastal Affairs, "Delaware: Wetlands," 1972
Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free, ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea.
– Sidney Lanier (1842-1881), "The Marshes of Glynn," 1878
Wetlands have a poor public image. . . Yet they are among the earth's greatest natural assets. . . mankind's waterlogged wealth.
– Edward Maltby, Waterlogged Wealth, 1986