Facts about water

The most common substance found on earth is water. Water is the only substance found naturally in three forms: solid, liquid and gas.

The amount of water is constant and recycled throughout time; actually, it is possible to drink water that was part of the dinosaur era.
Eighty percent of the earth's surface is water.
Ninety-seven percent of the earth's water is saltwater in oceans and seas. Of the 3% that is freshwater, only 1% is available for drinking - the remaining 2% is frozen in the polar ice caps.
Water serves as nature's thermometer, helping to regulate the earth's temperature.
Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, 0 degrees Celsius.
Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, 100 degrees Celsius.
Once evaporated, a water molecule spends ten days in the air.
Forty trillion gallons of water a day are carried in the atmosphere across the United States.
An acre of corn gives off 4000 gallons of water per day in evaporation.
Forty percent of the atmosphere's moisture falls as precipitation each day.
It would take 1.1 trillion gallons of water to cover one square mile with one foot of water.
One gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds; one cubic foot contains 7.84 gallons of water.
People need about 2.5 quarts of water a day (from drinking and eating) to maintain good health. A person can live without water for approximately one week, depending upon the conditions.
While usage varies from community to community and person to person, on average, Americans use 183 gallons of water a day for cooking, washing, flushing, and watering purposes. The average family turns on the tap between 70 and 100 times daily.
About 74% of home water usage is in the bathroom, about 21% is for laundry and cleaning, and about 5% is in the kitchen.
A clothes washer uses about 50 gallons of water (the permanent press cycle uses an additional 15 gallons).
It takes 12 to 20 gallons of water to run an automatic dishwasher for one cycle.
About 2 gallons of water are used to brush our teeth.
Flushing a toilet requires 2 to 7 gallons of water.
A 10-minute shower can take 25-50 gallons of water. High flow shower heads spew water out at 6-10 gallons a minute. Low Flow shower heads can cut the rate in half without reducing pressure.
About 25-50 gallons are needed for a tub bath.
A typical garden hose can deliver 50 gallons of water in just 5 minutes.
It takes about four times the amount of water to produce food and fiber than all other uses of water combined.
About 4000 gallons of water are needed to grow one bushel of corn, 11,000 gallons to grow one bushel of wheat, and about 135,000 gallons to grow one ton of alfalfa.
It takes about 1000 gallons of water to grow the wheat to make a two pound loaf of bread, and about 120 gallons to produce one egg.
About 1400 gallons of water are used to produce a meal of a quarter-pound hamburger, an order of fries and a soft drink.
About 48,000 gallons are needed to produce the typical American Thanksgiving dinner for eight people.
About 1800 gallons of water are needed to produce the cotton in a pair of jeans, and 400 gallons to produce the cotton in a shirt.
It takes 39,000 gallons of water to produce the average domestic auto, including tires.
Producing an average-size Sunday newspaper requires about 150 gallons of water.
Water makes up almost two-thirds of the human body, and seventy percent of the brain.
Four hundred gallons of water are recycled through our kidneys each day.
Water makes up 80% of an earthworm, 70% of a chicken, and 70% of an elephant.
Water makes up 90% of a tomato, 80% of pineapples and corn, and 70% of a tree.
About 60,000 public water systems across the United States process 34 billion gallons of water per day for home and commercial use. Eighty-five percent of the population is served by these facilities. The remaining 15 percent rely on 13 million private.
It can take up to 45 minutes for a water supplier to produce one glass of drinking water.
You can refill an 8 oz. glass of water approximately 15,000 times for the same cost as a six pack of soda pop. And, water has no sugar or caffeine.
An average of 800,000 water wells are drilled each year in the United States. That's tapping into our underground water supplies at approximately 100 times each hour for domestic, farming, and commercial needs.
The United States and Canada have about one million miles of pipelines and aqueducts - enough to circle the planet 40 times.

My favourite quotes.

    Water, the Hub of Life.
    Water is its mater and matrix, mother and medium.
    Water is the most extraordinary substance!
    Practically all its properties are anomolous, which enabled life to use it as building
    material for its machinery.
    Life is water dancing to the tune of solids.
        -  Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (1972)

    Water is the driver of Nature.
        - Leonardo da Vinci
        
    We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.
        - Jacques Cousteau

    The crisis of our diminishing water resources is just as severe (if less obviously
    immediate) as any wartime crisis we have ever faced.
    Our survival is just as much at stake as it was at the time of Pearl Harbor, or the Argonne,
    or Gettysburg, or Saratoga.
        -Jim Wright, U.S. Representative, The Coming Water Famine, 1966
        
    High quality water is more than the dream of the conservationists, more than a political
    slogan; high quality water, in the right quantity at the right place at the right time,
    is essential to health, recreation, and economic growth. Of all our planet's
    activities--geological movements, the reproduction and decay of biota, and even the
    disruptive propensities of certain species (elephants and humans come to mind) -- no force
    is greater than the hydrologic cycle.
        - Richard Bangs and Christian Kallen, Rivergods, 1985
    
    Between earth and earth's atmosphere, the amount of water remains constant; there is never
    a drop more, never a drop less.
    This is a story of circular infinity, of a planet birthing itself.
        - Linda Hogan, "Northern Lights," Autumn 1990 

    If you could tomorrow morning make water clean in the world, you would have done, in one
    fell swoop, the best thing you could have done for improving human health by improving
    environmental quality.
        - William C. Clark, speech, Racine, Wisconsin, April 1988
        
    In every glass of water we drink, some of the water has already passed through fishes,
    trees, bacteria, worms in the soil, and many other organisms, including people. . .
    Living systems cleanse water and make it fit, among other things, for human consumption.
        - Elliot A. Norse, in R.J. Hoage, ed., Animal Extinctions, 1985 

    Water is the most critical resource issue of our lifetime and our children's lifetime.
    The health of our waters is the principal measure of how we live on the land."
        -  Luna Leopold

    A river is the report card for its watershed.
        -  Alan Levere

    To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together."
        -  Barry Lopez 

    When we save a river, we save a major part of an ecosystem, and we save ourselves as well
    because of our dependence--physical, economic, spiritual,--on the water and its community
    of life.
        -  Tim Palmer, - The Wild and Scenic Rivers of America 

    Water is also one of the four elements, the most beautiful of God's creations. It is both
    wet and cold, heavy, and with a tendency to descend, and flows with great readiness.
    It is this the Holy Scripture has in view when it says, "And the darkness was upon the
    face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
    Water, then, is the most beautiful element and rich in usefulness, and purifies from all
    filth, and not only from the filth of the body but from that of the soul, if it should
    have received the grace of the Spirit.
        -  John of Damascus (679?-749) Exposition of the Orthodox Faith