Here's a picture of all the water on earth in comparison to all rest of the earth. It's been making the rounds today so I thought I'd share. Take it away science guy.
The picture...shows the size of a sphere that would contain all of Earth's water in comparison to the size of the Earth. You're probably thinking I missed a decimal point when running my calculator since surely all the water on, in, and above the Earth would fill a ball a lot larger than that "tiny" blue sphere sitting on the United States, reaching from about Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas. But, no, this diagram is indeed correct.
About 70 percent of the Earth's surface is water-covered, and the oceans hold about 96.5 percent of all Earth's water. But water also exists in the air as water vapor, in rivers and lakes, in icecaps and glaciers, in the ground as soil moisture and...even in you and your dog. Still, all that water would fit into that "tiny" ball. The ball is actually much larger than it looks like on your computer monitor or printed page because we're talking about volume, a 3-dimensional shape, but trying to show it on a flat, 2-dimensional screen or piece of paper. That tiny water bubble has a diameter of about 860 miles, meaning the height (towards your vision) would be 860 miles high, too! That is a lot of water.
Isn't that cray cray? It's definitely something to think about the next time you pee over the side of a boat.
1 comments:
Makes sense when you think about it. The earth is about 8,000 miles wide whereas the average ocean depth is about 2.5 miles. It's like a basketball covered in a thin film of water, that pooled together would fill a shot glass.
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