Mexico continues to violate our comprehensive Water Treaty, and this violation is seriously hurting our BEAUTIFUL TEXAS CROPS AND LIVESTOCK. Mexico still owes the U.S over 800,000 acre-feet of water for failing to comply with our Treaty over the past five years. The U.S needs Mexico to release 200,000 acre-feet of water before December 31st, and the rest must come soon after. As of now, Mexico is not responding, and it is very unfair to our U.S. Farmers who deserve this much needed water. That is why I have authorized documentation to impose a 5% Tariff on Mexico if this water isn’t released, IMMEDIATELY. The longer Mexico takes to release the water, the more our Farmers are hurt. Mexico has an obligation to FIX THIS NOW. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
1 Acre = 4,840 square yards or 43,560 square feet
Britannica:
An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover one acre with one foot of water.
200,000 acre-feet = 246696 megaliters or 0.246696 cubic kilometeres
This is about 64 and a half Webley Stadiums of water.
This honestly seems like the weirdest unit of measurement I’ve encountered.
I guess that if you don’t generally follow a pattern of x-unit = 1000 y-unit then at each magnitude you just need to make up some completely new thing.
“This acre-feet thing is too small to measure the volume of water required for our hyperchad-datacentre. We need a new unit, like 1 hyperchad-datacentre of water.”
It makes sense if you’re growing crops in the US. planting fields are measured in acres, and plants should get X inches of water per whatever time period. They’re typically using sprinkler systems so the water is going everywhere, not just directed around the plant as we would in a home garden.
Fair enough.
In the metric system this is isn’t really a problem because the math is much easier to start with.
1 hectare is 10,000 m2, so a depth of 1m over 1 hectare is 10,000m3, or a depth of 1cm is 10,000m3 / 100 = 100m3.
I had never heard of it myself, but looking at the definition instantly reminded me of board feet for measuring lumber, but that makes sense as wood is a solid and has a fixed length, width, and height.
For water, especially water you would be moving, I’d think gallons to some per of ten. Moving up from gallons looks to get into barrels it pipes which are also very not-picturable units.
Looking up how ocean volunteers are displayed, cubic miles or cubic km, still seems unimaginable, as what else do we picture on that scale?
I have the Wembley Stadium unit as a spoof of the banana for scale, but even never having seen that in person, picturing a generic stadium of water feels more relatable than whatever acre-feet or cubic miles are.
I can kinda see how, if one were inventing a system of measurements, relatability might be important.
However, predictable units, magnitudes, and relations between scales like distance, volume, and weight is also important.
I guess the two attributes relatability and predictability could be seen to oppose each other?
I mean a “barrel of water” is easier to imagine than 100L of water, but only if barrels are an object you’re familiar with.
However, the predictability of the metric system allows you to imagine a container with a volume of 100L even if no such container really exists.
I could visualize a commercial 55 gallon drum ok, but a barrel for volume measurements is 42 gallons. I’d never even heard of that before today.
Give me metric already. I’ve worked in pharma related fields for 20 years, all anyone cares about there is metric. I can visualize something I never actually seen like a deciliter easier than I can a “barrel.”