Friday, March 11, 2016

Putting all the world's water in a single cube

On the site Wait But Why, there is an interesting thought experiment. The author tries to imagine what it might look like if you took every drop of water on the planet and placed it into a giant cube.

He starts with a graphic from Wikipedia which helps show just how little fresh water there really is on the planet:
What's even more amazing is that all of the world's oceans, lakes, and rivers are really only a very thin film covering the surface of the earth. The cube containing all of the water (fresh or salt) is less than 700 miles on each side. From there, the cubes get progressively smaller. Here is a visualization of a comparison between all water, only fresh water, drinkable fresh water, and all the world's rivers combined on the same photo.


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