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Ever wonder how Much A Cloud Weighs?

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 21:57:11 GMT

clipped by: usmc6531

Let's start with a very simple white puffy cloud - a cumulus cloud. How much does the water in a cumulus cloud weigh?

Peggy LeMone, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, did the numbers. "The water in the little cloud weighs about 550 tons," she calculates. "Or if you want to convert it to something that might be a little more meaningful … think of elephants."

Floating Masses

Assume an elephant weighs about six tons, she says, that would mean that water inside a typical cumulous cloud would weigh about one hundred elephants.

The thought of a hundred elephants-worth of water suspended in the sky begs another question - what keeps it up there?

"First of all, the water isn't in elephant sized particles, it's in tiny tiny tiny particles," explains LeMone.

And those particles float on the warmer air that's rising below. But still, the concept of so much water floating in the sky was surprising even to a meteorologist like LeMone.

"I had no idea how much a cloud would weigh, actually, when I started the calculations," she says.

Outweighing Elephant Populations

So how many elephant units of water are inside a big storm cloud … 10 times bigger all the way around than the "puffy" cumulus cloud? Again, LeMone did the numbers: About 200,000 elephants.

Now, ratchet up the calculations for a hurricane about the size of Missouri and the figures get really massive.

"What we're doing is weighing the water in one cubic meter theoretically pulled from a cloud and then multiplying by the number of meters in a whole hurricane," she explains.

The result? Forty million elephants. That means the water in one hurricane weighs more than all the elephants on the planet. Perhaps even more than all the elephants that have ever lived on the planet. And that is a lot of water.

Tags: science, clouds

One Third of World's Population Suffers Water Shortage

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 16:46:09 GMT

clipped by: knslyr

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Global water crisis looms larger

One-third of the world’s population is short of water – a situation we were not predicted to arrive at until 2025 – according to a disturbing new report on the state of the world’s water supplies.

The report by the International Water Management Institute in Colombo, Sri Lanka, was released on Monday in Stockholm at the start of World Water Week. It paints a bleak picture of global access to fresh water and warns that the world cannot carry on complacently using water as if it will never run out.

“Business as usual is not an option,” says David Molden of the institute, and coordinator of the report, called Insights from the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture.

It concludes that one-third of the world’s population now suffers water scarcity, a situation that has materialised 20 years sooner than predicted by an assessment five years ago.

But action has to begin now. If nothing changes, twice as much water will be needed to feed everyone by 2050. But if the appropriate steps are taken now, global growth in water use could actually slow by 50%, the report finds.

Tags: water, global, water crisis, resources, natural resources, waste

Oh Shit!

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 05:44:27 GMT

clipped by: skwirlinator
clipper's remarks: Now I've done it!

Clip Source: www.dotcomscotland.co.uk

Apology

Sorry – you have reached

The End of the Internet

This is the VERY last page.

There are no more links. No more exciting sites to visit – NOTHING.

Please turn off your computer and get a life!!!

Thank you for visiting the INTERNET.

Tags: funny, entertainment

How to defragment a single file and not the entire disk

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 12:49:16 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde

Clip Source: www.tech-recipes.com

How to defragment a single file and not the entire disk

Home -> Windows -> Network administration

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From the computer of: shamanstears (19 recipes)
Created: Aug 18, 2006 Updated: Aug 20, 2006

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Sysinternals provides the Contig utility, which you can use to defragment individual files or folders.

You can download the tool at

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Contig.html

To defragment a single file, use this format:

contig [filename]

To analyze the fragmentation status, add the -a switch, for example:

X: emp>contig -a en_whatchmacallit.iso

Alternatively, you can use wild cards in addition to the -s switch to search through the path given and any child folders and perform degragmentation on files matching the given file name criteria. The Contig tool is a great utility to keep important files defragmented without having to worry about the entire disk.

Tags: windows