On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 14:32:18 -0400, Jeff Wisnia
wrote:

Andy Asberry wrote:


I read somewhere that a faucet that drips once a second will use 6
gallons a day. Can anyone verify that?

If I was still teaching students I'd tell you to inmrove your chances of
getting a "A" from be by doing it yourself, but I'm feeling good today,
and you piqued my curiosity, so here goes. (noblese oblige.)

Googling quickly locates the volume of "a drop" of water. It's .05 ml.
(I suppose that would vary a little with the shape and surface
conditions of what it's dripping off from and the purity of the water
too, but let's use that number for now...)

http://www.alumni.ca/~walkerd/sf7.html

There are 86400 seconds in a day. (A number I'll never be able to forget
because I used to help make atomic clocks for the GPS satellites.)

86,400 * .05ml = 4320 ml

Plugging this in at:

http://www.convert-me.com/en/convert/volume

Gives us 1.141 gallons, not even 20 percent of what you "read somewhere".

(Don't believe everything you read Andy...)

HTH

Jeff

Jeff, if you are going to correct the papers of the world, you will
have a steady job.

http://energyoutlet.com/res/waterheat/ho****er.html states that 60
drops per minute of HOT water equals 168 gallons/month.

http://www.lincoln.ne.gov/city/pwork...e/medchome.htm says
190-260/month

http://www.wichita.gov/CityOffices/W...nservation.htm
113/month

http://www.ci.lamar.co.us/drop_by_drop.htm 2400/year

http://www.seo.state.nm.us/water-info/water-trivia.html 192/month

I did learn from this little exercise. I now know that the viscosity
of water at 20 degrees C is 1.0016 centipoise. A word I had never even
heard before.

My new question: How many drops per minute possible from our leaking
faucet before it becomes a stream? Yes, I did search. I've read how to
produce methane gas from cow manure, the most effective spray droplet
size for fire fighting and number of drops of bleach or iodine to
purify water.

)