4 ms·

For reference, Lake Michigan has 1.3e15 gallons of water.

danesparza 8y ago
For the scientific notationally challenged, that's 1,300,000,000,000,000 gallons of water. Incredibly, 7M gallons of water a day is a rounding error for lake Michigan. I don't mean to minimize the impact this factory might have -- I just mean to emphasize the incredible amount of water Lake Michigan has.
- froindt 8y ago
  I find gallons to be an unintuitive unit of measure, so I like to convert to cubic feet because it gives a better visual sense of the volume. 7M gallons is 935,800 ft^3. This would fill a football field 19.5 feet high. If you made that into a cube, it would be 97.8 ft per edge. If you convert to a flow rate, that's 10.83 ft^3/second.
  - Y_Y 8y ago
    I find gallon and cubic feet to be on the same level hogsheads and cubic cubits in terms of applicability and usage. There's no trouble visualising a volume unit like a litre, particularly if you're used to working with such quantities. It is tough visualising unit that have no traction outside of one metrically-solopsist region though. Also a "football field" isn't constant between football codes (Canadian, Association, Gaelic, Australian, American, etc.) nor even between different grounds in some cases. Not a great unit.
    - majewsky 8y ago
      Is there some standard system of bullshit units that are notoriously underdefined and only used in shitty science/engineering documentaries? Here in Germany, commonly used bullshit units include "soccer field" for area or "VW Golf" for mass.
    - froindt 8y ago
      >Also a "football field" isn't constant between football codes (Canadian, Association, Gaelic, Australian, American, etc.) nor even between different grounds in some cases. Not a great unit. I was going full American here with American football fields (standard 300x160 feet) forgetting about the ambiguity saying "football". I understand your frustration, but having an idea of what 7,000,000 of anything would look like is non-trivial. If it were 7,000,000 cubic meters you might re-express things to be easier to visualize. Unfortunately for the time being, the US is using gallons, so I'm stuck making these comparisons to grasp at what that volume looks like.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > I was going full American here with American football fields (standard 300x160 feet) American football fields are 360×160 feet.
        froindt 8y ago
        I guess end zones count. I had them excluded. Knocks it down to 16.2 feet.
      - Y_Y 8y ago
        >Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something. - Mitch Hedberg I know what you mean, and I sympathise that it's a difficult problem. I suppose I tend to think of "a billion cubic metres" as more like one big cubic kilometre than a billion small things. There's some art to merging some numbers into units, but I don't know anyone who's solved it.
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    It's like 12 seconds of Niagara Falls (in tourist mode).
- hpcjoe 8y ago
  While this is true, it is less impressive to have a headline of "Foxconn to use rounding error amounts of water from lake Michigan." And less likely to get people rallied to your cause, which I am assuming the headline/article are about. My specific concern over use of this dynamic resource[1] is the potential environmental damage due to chemical use/handling, and potential for hazard to life and limb from this. Michigan doesn't quite have a great history with this, courtesy of other large chemical companies. Basically hydrology impacts are the least of my concerns. [1] see http://www.miseagrant.umich.edu/lessons/lessons/by-broad-concept/earth-science/data-sets/hydrology-of-the-great-lakes-long-term-trends/background-hydrology-of-the-great-lakes-long-term-trends/ http://www.miseagrant.umich.edu/lessons/lessons/by-broad-con...
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    Wisconsin is the regulator in this case.

For the scientific notationally challenged, that's 1,300,000,000,000,000 gallons of water. Incredibly, 7M gallons of water a day is a rounding error for lake Michigan. I don't mean to minimize the impact this factory might have -- I just mean to emphasize the incredible amount of water Lake Michigan has.

froindt 8y ago
I find gallons to be an unintuitive unit of measure, so I like to convert to cubic feet because it gives a better visual sense of the volume. 7M gallons is 935,800 ft^3. This would fill a football field 19.5 feet high. If you made that into a cube, it would be 97.8 ft per edge. If you convert to a flow rate, that's 10.83 ft^3/second.
- Y_Y 8y ago
  I find gallon and cubic feet to be on the same level hogsheads and cubic cubits in terms of applicability and usage. There's no trouble visualising a volume unit like a litre, particularly if you're used to working with such quantities. It is tough visualising unit that have no traction outside of one metrically-solopsist region though. Also a "football field" isn't constant between football codes (Canadian, Association, Gaelic, Australian, American, etc.) nor even between different grounds in some cases. Not a great unit.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    Is there some standard system of bullshit units that are notoriously underdefined and only used in shitty science/engineering documentaries? Here in Germany, commonly used bullshit units include "soccer field" for area or "VW Golf" for mass.
  - froindt 8y ago
    >Also a "football field" isn't constant between football codes (Canadian, Association, Gaelic, Australian, American, etc.) nor even between different grounds in some cases. Not a great unit. I was going full American here with American football fields (standard 300x160 feet) forgetting about the ambiguity saying "football". I understand your frustration, but having an idea of what 7,000,000 of anything would look like is non-trivial. If it were 7,000,000 cubic meters you might re-express things to be easier to visualize. Unfortunately for the time being, the US is using gallons, so I'm stuck making these comparisons to grasp at what that volume looks like.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > I was going full American here with American football fields (standard 300x160 feet) American football fields are 360×160 feet.
      - froindt 8y ago
        I guess end zones count. I had them excluded. Knocks it down to 16.2 feet.
    - Y_Y 8y ago
      >Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something. - Mitch Hedberg I know what you mean, and I sympathise that it's a difficult problem. I suppose I tend to think of "a billion cubic metres" as more like one big cubic kilometre than a billion small things. There's some art to merging some numbers into units, but I don't know anyone who's solved it.
- maxerickson 8y ago
  It's like 12 seconds of Niagara Falls (in tourist mode).
hpcjoe 8y ago
While this is true, it is less impressive to have a headline of "Foxconn to use rounding error amounts of water from lake Michigan." And less likely to get people rallied to your cause, which I am assuming the headline/article are about. My specific concern over use of this dynamic resource[1] is the potential environmental damage due to chemical use/handling, and potential for hazard to life and limb from this. Michigan doesn't quite have a great history with this, courtesy of other large chemical companies. Basically hydrology impacts are the least of my concerns. [1] see http://www.miseagrant.umich.edu/lessons/lessons/by-broad-concept/earth-science/data-sets/hydrology-of-the-great-lakes-long-term-trends/background-hydrology-of-the-great-lakes-long-term-trends/ http://www.miseagrant.umich.edu/lessons/lessons/by-broad-con...
- maxerickson 8y ago
  Wisconsin is the regulator in this case.