Essay On Water Of Water

1.7 Water We Drink

Anyone who can solve the problems of water will be worthy of two Nobel prizes – one for peace and one for science. – John F. Kennedy (1917 – 1963), the 35th President of the United States

Water is the most critical resource of our lifetime, our children's lifetime, and the lifetimes of the generations that come after. The quality of the water is one principal measure of how we live on the land. Water sustains life. Water is our lifeline. It is the most basic of all natural resources. Civilizations grew or shrunk depending on the availability of water.

Quantity! How much water is there in Earth? Compared to our relatively known neighbors – Venus at the left (towards Sun), Mars at the right and our dust-dry Moon – we look

Without going in details, a conservative rough estimate is that Earth carries with it about 3 global oceans of water – 1 global ocean on top what we see on surface; and 2 global oceans down below where it sits silently with the minerals. 3 global oceans may sound like a lot, but it is not – especially when compared to the total mass of the earth. By volume, it makes up only less than 1/10th of 1% of the earth’s mass. One way to visualize: Visualize earth as a solid ball of 8,000 miles in diameter with only a film of water layer, 10 miles deep max at the surface. Another way to visualize: Visualize earth as a 160 pounds body (a typical human body weight), it has only (160x0.001) 0.16 pounds of water which is 2½ ounce or a mouthful of water at the most. All it means is that, relatively, it is only a teeny amount of water in liquid form that helps to support the life on Earth. In contrast, for reference, there is a cloud of water vapor, 140 trillion times of Earths’ worth of water (or 20 billion times the mass of the sun), swirling around the giant black hole. Again, just for reference, the blackest black hole that scientists found recently is a monster size of 21 billion suns and is at 330 million light-years