If you put all the water on Earth in one place it would look like this:
Yes that is a lot of water, but compared with the rest of the planet it really is a tiny ball
via Boing Boing
UPDATE: Here is another image which also does the same thing with earth’s atmosphere. Again a surprisingly tiny ball.
UPDATE 2: Here is an image that shows what it would look like if you put all the fresh water on Earth in one place:
I wonder how much the volume changes if you would include all the water contained as hydrated minerals inside the earth. Would the volume be much bigger? Not much? Is this water already included? What about groundwater?
Groundwater is tiny and can be neglected at this level. I don’t know about “hydrated minerals”; if these are chemical bonds, presumably no. There is very little water in the magma or the core, for that matter, though again these aren’t practicable sources.
If the figure were limited to fresh water it would be much smaller – about 3% if I recall correctly.
Using graphics to represent data is nice, do you have the equations for the spheres of water shown in the graphics? And what is the source used which measured the volume of water in all the oceans, lakes, and reservoirs? And does the source include groundwater and aquifers? And atmospheric water?
Thanks.
[ The original source has the breakdown; these numbers may not be exact but are certainly of the right order.
I’m surprised that aquifers greatly outweigh lakes. I may have said different recently. -mt ]