Facts About Water

We tend to take water for granted, but it is a very precious commodity. Since the lake is all about water, we thought we give you a few interesting facts about water. We all know that life cannot exist without water. The following is mostly taken from the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of Science Illustrated.

1. In most young man and women 50% to 60% of their body weight is from water.
2. The brain is 70% water.
3. All foods contain water, even those that seem dry.
4. The average length of time that water stays in the air before falling out as rain, snow, or condensation is 10 days.
5. One drop of water per second from a dripping faucet for a year means 2,642 gallons of water wasted.
6. At any given moment, 3,100 cubic miles of water are locked in the atmosphere in the form of clouds or humidity.
7. Only approximately 1/8 of the mass of an iceberg, or 13%, is above water.
8. To harvest the beans and prepare them into one cup of coffee takes about 37 gallons of water.
9. To produce 1 pound of rice requires 408 gallons of water.
10. A large oak tree can evaporate up to 105 gallons of water.
11. To produce one pound of beef requires 1,860 gallons of water.
12. Out of millions of chemical compounds, water is the only one of which the liquid state is heavier than the solid state. Water has the highest density at 39.2 degrees Fahrenheit (at standard atmospheric pressure)
13. Groundwater constitutes 1.7% of the world’s water.
14. Only 0.013% of the world’s water is in lakes.
15. About 0.001% of the world’s water is moisture in the soil.
16. Biological water, water in plants and animals, is 0.00001% of the world’s water.
17. The oceans hold 96.5% of the world’s water.
18. The rivers hold about 0.0002%.
19. Ice caps, permanent snow, and glaciers contain about 1.74%.
20. Without water, a person can only survive 7 days; without food about one month.
21. Some people in developing countries get only 7.9 gallons of water per day, which is equivalent to a 5-minute shower in an American household.
22. Only 0.5% of the world's water is available as fresh water for our planet’s ecosystem and population.
23. To produce the necessary food requires 70% of the available fresh water
24. The average American uses 100 to 175 gallons of water per day.
25. It takes 5 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of bottled water.
26. More than half of the water used for irrigation leaks, evaporates or runs off.
27. The water we drink today is the same water the dinosaurs drank—there is no new water.