Fascinating Water Facts
Water Use Facts | Where's the Water | Physical Facts | The Water Cycle
Geography | Water Supply | Pollution | Area Water Facts

Did you know...?

• The average toilet uses 5 to 7 gallons of water per flush.
• A shower can use 25 to 50 gallons (5 gallons per minute)
• Just washing your hands can use up to 3 gallons of water (with tap running at 3 gallons per minute)
• Leaving the water running while you brush your teeth can waste 3 gallons of water (at 3 gallons per minute).
• Outdoor spigots can pump out 5 to 10 gallons per minute.
• Automatic dishwashers use about 15 gallons per load.
• Washing one load of clothes in an automatic washer uses about 45 gallons.
• The average bath takes about 36 gallons of water.
• The average individual uses about 125 gallons of water per day.
• An average residence uses 107,000 gallons of water per year.
• About 340 billion gallons of water are used every day in the United States. This total includes water used in irrigation, in industry, and in fire fighting and street cleaning.
• It takes about 1 gallon of water to process a quarter pound of hamburger.
• It takes 1,500 gallons of water to process 1 barrel of beer.
• It takes 39,000 gallons of water to manufacture a new car, including tires.
• It takes about 800,000 gallons of water to grow an acre of cotton.
• Ten gallons of water are needed to refine one gallon of gasoline.
• Cutting one minute off your shower time can save about 700 gallons of water per month.
• A faucet that drips 60 times in one minute would waste over 3 gallons a day, 1,225 gallons per year.
• Humans require about 2 1/2 quarts of water a day.
• A human can live more than a month without food but only as much as one week without water.

Where’s the Water

Did you know...?

• 80 percent of the earth's surface is water
• 97 percent of the earth's water is seawater.
• 2 percent of the earth's water supply is locked in icecaps and glaciers.
• 1 percent of the earth's water is available for drinking.
• About 60 percent of the weight of the human body is water.
• An elephant is 70 percent water.
• A tomato is 95 percent water.
• An egg is about 74 percent water
• A watermelon is about 92 percent water
• A piece of lean meat is about 70 percent water.
• Fresh, uncompacted snow is usually 90-95 percent trapped air.

Physical Facts

Did you know...?

• At sea-level pure water freezes into ice at 32 F (0 C)
• At sea-level pure water boils into steam at 212 F (100 C).
• Seawater freezes at about 28 F (-2 C)
• A cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 pounds.
• A gallon (231 cubic inches) of water weighs about 8 1/3 pounds.
• Seawater is usually about 3 1/2 percent heavier than fresh water because it contains about 35 pounds of salts in each 1,000 pounds of water.
• The pressure a mile down in the ocean is more than 2,300 pounds per square inch.
• Water expands by nearly one tenth of its volume when it freezes. 1 cubic foot of water becomes 1.09 cubic feet of ice.
• When a cubic foot of water at sea-level pressure boils away, it becomes about 1,700 cubic feet of steam.

Water Cycle

Did you know...?

• The water we use today is the same water the dinosaurs used.
• A fully grown oak tree may transpire about 100 gallons (380 liters) of water a day. In summer an acre of corn transpires from 3,000 to 4,000 gallons (11,360 to 15,140 liters) of water each day.
• Once evaporated, a water molecule spends ten days in the air.
• Every 24 hours about 250 cubic miles of water evaporates from the sea and the land.

Geography

Did you know...?

• The earth's oceans cover about 140,500,000 square miles and contain almost 330,000,000 cubic miles of water.
• Scientists estimate that there may be enough ground-water in North America to cover the continent with a sheet of water almost 100 feet (30 meters) thick.
• The tallest waterfall in the world is Angel Falls (Venezuela) with a total drop of 3,212 feet (980m).
• River that carries most water in the world is the Amazon River (South America) which discharges about 4 million cubic feet every second into Atlantic Ocean. That's about 8 trillion gallons per day!
• The longest river in the world is the Nile River (Africa) at 4,145 miles (6,670km).
• The world's shortest river is the Roe River in Montana at 201 feet long.
• The deepest and oldest lake in the world is Lake Baikal (Siberia) at 6,365 ft. (1,940 m) deep and 25 million years old Lake Baikal holds one-fifth of the earth's available fresh water.
• The largest ocean in the world is the Pacific Ocean at 64 million sq. miles (166 million sq. km)
• The worlds largest (surface area) freshwater lake is Lake Superior (North America) with an area of 32,000 sq. miles (82,103 sq. km).
• Tutunendo, Columbia is the world's wettest place with an average rainfall of 463.4 inches (annual mean).
• The world's driest place is Desierto de Atacama (near Calma, Chile). It remained almost rainless for about 400 years (to 1971).

Water Supply

Did you know...?

• Irrigation was developed in 5000 BC.
• The Romans constructed their first aqueducts in about 312 BC.
• Forty-eight million people in the United States receive their drinking water from private or household wells.
• Nearly 2 percent of U.S. homes have no running water.
• The total miles of pipeline and aqueducts in the US/Canada is approximately 1 million miles, enough to circle the earth 40 times.
• There are 58,900 community public water supply systems in the US.
• Chlorine was first used in the United States to sterilize city water in 1908.

Pollution

Did you know...?

• Four quarts of oil can cause an eight-acre oil slick if spilled or dumped down a storm sewer.
• One gram of 2,4-D (a common household herbicide) can contaminate 2.6 million gallons (10 million liters) of drinking water.

Area Water Facts

Did you know...?

• Like the Nile, the New River flows from south to north.
• The New River is fairly warm with temperatures ranging from about 55 degrees(F) in April up to 80 degrees(F) in August
• One of the oldest rivers in North America it can be traced to the Jurassic period, around 180 million years ago when it formed the headwaters of a now-extinct river that geologists call the Teays.
• The New River is about 250 miles long, beginning in North Carolina and ending in West Virginia where it joins the Gauley River.