| H2O Facts
-Of all water on earth, 97.5% is salt water, and of the remaining 2.5% fresh water, some 70% is frozen in the polar icecaps. The other 30% is mostly present as soil moisture or lies in underground aquifers.
-In the end, less than 1% of the world's fresh water (or about 0.007% of all water on earth) is readily accessible for direct human uses.
-If all the earth's water fit in a gallon jug, available fresh water would equal just over a tablespoon.
-A person can live about a month without food, but only about a week without water.
-Some of the world's largest cities, including Beijing, Buenos Aires, Dhaka, Lima, and Mexico City, depend heavily on groundwater for their water supply. It is unlikely that dependence on aquifers, which take many years to recharge, will be sustainable.
-Most of the earth's surface consists of water; there is much more water than there is land.
-Water can not only be found on the surface, but also in the ground and in the air.
-There is the same amount of water on earth as there was when the earth was formed. The water that came from your faucet could contain molecules that Neanderthals drank.
-The overall amount of water on our planet has remained the same for two billion years.
-There are two kinds of water; salt water and freshwater. Salt water contains great amounts of salt, whereas freshwater has a dissolved salt concentration of less than 1%. Only freshwater can be applied as drinking water.
-Water consists of three atoms, 2 Hydrogen atoms and an Oxygen atom, that are bond together due to electrical charges.
-The weight of a water molecule depends on the number of moles present, as it is 18 grams per mole.
-Water moves around the earth in a water cycle. The water cycle has five parts: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, infiltration and surface run-off.
-In a 100-year period, a water molecule spends 98 years in the ocean, 20 months as ice, about 2 weeks in lakes and rivers, and less than a week in the atmosphere.
-Groundwater can take a human lifetime just to traverse a mile.
-Most of the earth's surface water is permanently frozen or salty.
-Water regulates the earth's temperature.
-Water freezes at zero degrees Celcius.
-Water vaporizes at a hundred degrees Celcius.
-Water is the only substance that is found naturally on earth in three forms: liquid, gas, solid.
-If water changes phase its physical appearance changes due to parting of water molecules. In the solid phase the water molecules are close together and in the gaseous phase they are the furthest apart.
-Frozen water is 9% lighter than water, which is why ice floats on water.
-A litre of water weighs 1.01 kilograms.
-It doesn't take much salt to make water "salty." If one-thousandth (or more) of the weight of water is from salt, then the water is "saline."
-Saline water can be desalinated for use as drinking water by going through a process to remove the salt from the water.
-When water contains a lot of calcium and magnesium, it is called hard water. Hard water is not suited for all purposes water is normally used for.
-As oceans are very wide and there are multiple to be found on earth, oceans store most of the earth's water. This is apparently 97% of the total amount of water on earth, 2% of which is frozen.
-80% of the earth's water is surface water. The other 20% is either ground water or atmospheric water vapor.
-Over 90% of the world's supply of fresh water is located in Antarctica.
-The earth's total amount of water has a volume of about 344 million cubic miles.
315 million cubic miles is seawater.
9 million cubic miles is groundwater in aquifers.
7 million cubic miles is frozen in polar ice caps.
53,000 cubic miles of water pass through the planet's lakes and streams.
4,000 cubic miles of water is atmospheric moisture.
3,400 cubic miles of water are locked within the bodies of living things.
The total amount of water in the body of an average adult is 37 litres.
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