A teralitre is a cubic kilometre.
_____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John M. Steele Sent: 11 April 2009 15:23 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:44578] Fw: Re: Water, teraliters, was FPLA 2010 Indeed, there is a prefix error. This "facts & figures" page http://www.barwonwater.vic.gov.au/cms/serveDoc.cfm?docId=24911 indicates Barwon water supplies 32000 ML of water annually, processes 21000 ML of sewage, and serves 270000 customers (that is apparently population, as household connections is less than half that, 131000). Thus average household use is therefore around 244 m³ per year. A thousand-fold error should cause a "whoa, wait a minute" response. I believe the fact that it didn't is adequate evidence that megaliters, gigaliters, and teraliters (even with "re" spelling) are not very intuitive units and throw a great cloud of confusion over any attempt to visualize or sanity check the amount. Any form of proper cubic measure, from 32 x 10^6 m³, 32 million cubic meters, 32000 dam³, 32 hm³, would be a more suitable way to convey this information, and be less likely to obscure a thousand-fold error. Teraliters are frightening. --- On Sat, 4/11/09, John M. Steele <[email protected]> wrote: From: John M. Steele <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [USMA:44564] Re: FPLA 2010 To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>, [email protected] Date: Saturday, April 11, 2009, 8:59 AM You have proven megaliters, gigaliters, and teraliters are used. That is a staggering amount of water given Geelong's population. Where does it all go? Irrigation? If I compare with Detroit, private consumption and industry can't account for much. A volume of 32 TL/annum meant absolutely nothing to me, a completely incomprehensible number. Some manipulation led me to it being 32 km³ per year, giving me some sense of what you do to the river. It also works out to a withdrawal of 1015 m³/s. It still seemed large, so I compared it to the Detroit River (part of the connection between Lake Huron and Lake Erie, and the Detroit Water Dept, which serves a metro region of about 5 million people. The Detroit River flow varies typically from 4500 m³/s in low lake level years to 6500 m³/s in high lake level years. The Detroit Water department handles an average of 673 million gallons per day, by their figures. Converting, this is 0.93 TL (or km³) per year (29.5 m³/s) for 5 million people. That figure is reasonably consistent with my household use of 273 m³/year) As we use less than 1/32 the water for about 25X the population (is Geelong under 200,000?), I wonder if there isn't a prefix error in that news article. (If it isn't an error, you guys need more conservation effort!) --- On Sat, 4/11/09, Pat Naughtin <[email protected]> wrote: From: Pat Naughtin <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:44564] Re: FPLA 2010 To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Date: Saturday, April 11, 2009, 12:00 AM On 2009/04/11, at 1:35 PM, Jeremiah MacGregor wrote: I can see where the terms megalitre, gigalitre and teralitre would be less cumbersome for the public then their equivalents of cubic dekametres, cubic hectometres and cubic kilometres. Dear Jerry and Stan, Here is an example of the use of gigalitres from our local paper, The Geelong Advertiser, from October last year. Barwon Water is our local water supply organisation as we get most of our water from the Barwon river. http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/article/2008/10/24/26151_news.html Cheers, Pat Naughtin PO Box 305 Belmont 3216, Geelong, Australia Phone: 61 3 5241 2008 Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com <http://www.metricationmatters.com/> for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected] or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter to subscribe.
