How much water and atmosphere is there on earth? Cool pic. - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

photon · 02-02-2008, 12:37 PM

So imagine you took all the water on earth and made it into a big ball, how big would that ball be? Really think about it, make your guess, and then scroll down to see.

Make sure you guessed!

Water:

Atmosphere:

I definitely guessed more water than atmosphere volume wise, and I imagined them quiet a bit bigger too.

Prototype · 02-02-2008, 12:38 PM

I guessed it would look like a white square with a red 'X' in it... looks like I was right.

EDIT: Weird... it showed up as a red X when I loaded the thread, and even tried the 'show picture', but when I coppied the URL and put it in the address bar, it worked...

I'll never doubt you, or act all smart assy around you again Photon!

Interesting... thought both would be bigger... but then again, they do outline the surface of Earth... not what's inside it.

jammies · 02-02-2008, 12:38 PM

All the water on Earth fits into two lines of white space? I never would have thought!

EDIT - mmm, about what I figured - although it's way cooler to see the graphical version of it. It's just a thin thin layer of air between us and the evil aliens of the interplanetary void...

photon · 02-02-2008, 12:39 PM

yeah yeah..

pics fixed.

jammies · 02-02-2008, 01:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fotze

Oops, wrong thread.

Can I be directed to the right one, then?

Actually, that screams "breast reduction surgery" like it's never been screamed before. How does that poor woman walk around like that - it'd be like having a pair of fighting opossums strapped to your chest all day long. And her back must just KILL her!

tanguay'sstillgood · 02-02-2008, 02:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jammies

Can I be directed to the right one, then?

Actually, that screams "breast reduction surgery" like it's never been screamed before. How does that poor woman walk around like that - it'd be like having a pair of fighting opossums strapped to your chest all day long. And her back must just KILL her!

not to mention how completely unattractive it is.

RougeUnderoos · 02-02-2008, 02:07 PM

I don't know about the atmosphere one, but it looks to me like if you broke that "ball of water" it wouldn't even cover the Atlantic in that picture, let alone the rest of it.

Of course it is well known that I'm pretty thick, so maybe some can explain it to me.

flip · 02-02-2008, 02:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

I don't know about the atmosphere one, but it looks to me like if you broke that "ball of water" it wouldn't even cover the Atlantic in that picture, let alone the rest of it.

Of course it is well known that I'm pretty thick, so maybe some can explain it to me.

it's because even though it looks small it would only take a very thin layer of water to cover all the oceans. If the picture was considerably bigger or had dimensions listed on it it would make sense. but i would venture to guess that the ball of water is roughly 3500Kms wide and about the same tall, assuming that is a perfect sphere.

the volume of a sphere is 4/3 x pi x the radius cubed.

if the radius is roughly 1750km (i just used google maps and estimated that the ball goes from near france to about Turkey)

therefore this ball of water is roughly 22,449,297,503km cubed in volume.

that's a lot of ****ing water

everyone else feel free to correct my math but I think I did that right.

Edit: Just checked Wiki and it says the oceans volume is 1,300 million cubic kilometers which is 1,300,000,000 right? and that is just the oceans, i believe the question asked all the water on earth.

jammies · 02-02-2008, 02:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

I don't know about the atmosphere one, but it looks to me like if you broke that "ball of water" it wouldn't even cover the Atlantic in that picture, let alone the rest of it.

Hold your hand under a tap. Allow a couple drops of water to fall onto your palm. Notice how few it takes to make "pools" in the ridges of your skin. Same principle here, except your palm is replaced by the earth, the ridges of skin are land, and the "pools" are oceans.

keratosis · 02-02-2008, 02:33 PM

Somehow the water one just doesn't look right.
Just doesn't look like 1,300 million cubic k's.But
then again I really don't know what 1,300 million
cubic k's looks like.

RougeUnderoos · 02-02-2008, 02:39 PM

I'm sure you guys with your calculators and modern plumbing are right, but I'm just not sold on this. If you poke that ball of water with a pin it looks like at least a 10th of it would be gone just to fill up the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

Don't forget that the oceans are deep too. My Aunt went on a cruise once and she sent me a postcard from Acapulco and it said that when they were out on the boat she couldn't even see the bottom of the ocean because it was so deep.

But whatever. I'm still confused as to why all the water doesn't just fly off into space as the earth spins so I'm not much for this sience business.

ricosuave · 02-02-2008, 03:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

But whatever. I'm still confused as to why all the water doesn't just fly off into space as the earth spins so I'm not much for this sience business.

little thing called gravity. yep. kinda cool. you should check it sometime.

but back to the pic, i dont buy it. over, what 90% of the surface of the earth is water and thats how its represented?

CrusaderPi · 02-02-2008, 03:06 PM

Simple, the surface of the earth doesn't take up much room when compared to the volume of the Earth. The water sphere seems about right.

The atmospheric representation seems off though. What's the diameter of the atmosphere compare to that of the Earth? Or a better question would be what layers of the atmosphere are counter?

Edit: Upon doing some rough math the earth's volume is roughly 20X the volume of the atmosphere. Neat representation.

jolinar of malkshor · 02-02-2008, 03:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

I'm sure you guys with your calculators and modern plumbing are right, but I'm just not sold on this. If you poke that ball of water with a pin it looks like at least a 10th of it would be gone just to fill up the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

Don't forget that the oceans are deep too. My Aunt went on a cruise once and she sent me a postcard from Acapulco and it said that when they were out on the boat she couldn't even see the bottom of the ocean because it was so deep.

But whatever. I'm still confused as to why all the water doesn't just fly off into space as the earth spins so I'm not much for this sience business.

Not to mention all the glaciers and underground reserves.

STeeLy · 02-02-2008, 03:36 PM

I definitely thought the amount of water would be bigger than that. I'm not surprised by size of the atmosphere.

but Wow, was I ever off about how much water there really is on earth.

photon · 02-02-2008, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ricosuave

but back to the pic, i dont buy it. over, what 90% of the surface of the earth is water and thats how its represented?

Not "is water", but "is covered with water". And that's the key in this one, the oceans are deep, but compared to the actual size of the earth they're almost nothing.

A couple of analogies I heard once, first was if you reduced the earth to the size of an apple, the atmosphere would be the thickness of the skin.. and that would apply to water too except for the really deep parts.

Another analogy was if you took a billiard ball (smooth, right?) and increased it to the size of the earth, the small imperfections would be many times the size of the highest mountains and deepest oceans.

The scale involved is crazy.

RougeUnderoos · 02-02-2008, 03:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ricosuave

little thing called gravity. yep. kinda cool. you should check it sometime.

Gravity, eh? I don't know much about science and I admitted it, but I"m not a complete moron. I'm pretty sure that the brown sauce I pour over the turkey and mashed potatoes at Christmas isn't what keeps the water on the earth.

ricosuave · 02-02-2008, 05:19 PM

^ hey rouge, I was just teasing ya a little

the very thing that makes your brown gravy drop down to your plate (or the floor) is the exact thing that keeps the oceans where they are (albeit on a much larger scale...

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives...1058.Es.r.html
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...4210933AAeihKG

that is the best I can do right now

EDIT : LOL just misread gravy and gravity. you got me. well played sir.

ricosuave · 02-02-2008, 05:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by photon

Not "is water", but "is covered with water".

yeah, that was a typo

octothorp · 02-02-2008, 08:28 PM

Okay, I'm not sure I believe the diagrams either, particularly the atmosphere one. To the top of the thermosphere, you've got about 100km. Multiply that by the earth's surface area of 510,065,600 km2, and you get a volume of 51,006,560,000 km3. Radius of a sphere with this volume is 2298 km, diameter 4596km. (If anyone better at math want to check my volume to radius calculation, I wouldn't mind at all.)

On the map, the atmosphere bubble fits between London and Istanbul, which is only 2505 km apart. If you drew a sphere with about twice the diameter (stretching from London to around maybe Baghdad), you'd have a more accurate depiction.