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H2O Facts

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02 January 2007
WaterMan
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Get To Know Water - The Elixir Of Life So you say you know about the facts of life. Friends, there is much more to life than the birds and bees.

We're talking about water. How much do you really know about the facts of "the elixir of life" - H2O?

That's why WaterMan and his crack H2O staff has compiled an authoritative list of H2O Facts for you to share. Let H2O be the ~~small~~ BIG talk of your life ...

Water is the essential source of life.
Water has been used medically for many thousands of years (aka Hydrotherapy) throughout the globe.
Presently, 1.1 billion people lack access to improved water supply and 2.4 billion to improved sanitation. Unless action is stepped up, the number of people who lack access to improved water supply could increase to 2.3 billion by 2025.
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.
A person needs 4 to 5 gallons of water per day to survive.
The average American individual uses 100 to 176 gallons of water at home each day.
The average African family uses about 5 gallons of water each day.
More than 200 million hours are spent each day by women and female children to collect water from distant, often polluted sources.
Approximately 60 to 70% of the rural population in the developing world have neither access to a safe and convenient source of water.
Water systems fail at a rate of 50% or higher.
According to the UN, 20% of the world's population in 30 countries face water shortages. This number is expected to rise to 30% of the world's population in 50 countries in 2025.
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.
Poor people in the developing world pay on average 12 times more per liter of water than fellow citizens connected to municipal systems; these poverty-stricken people use less water, much of which is dirty and contaminated.
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.
To determine water quality certified agencies take samples that are tested in a laboratory. The samples are tested on various factors, to determine if they suffice water quality standards.
Each country has its own water quality standards that determine to which degree water should be purified, depending on the purpose it will be 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.