H2Oooohhh!!!...A Study in Blue

H2Oooohhh!!!

Wonder Water… Have you ever stopped to think about how  important  water is in our lives? No? Well, have a lookat this facts file:

·      70% of our planet is covered in water: considering that the average depth of the oceans is about 1,000 meters, the whole amount of water that surrounds us is roughly 1,260,000,000,000,000,000,000 liters: astonishing, isn’t it?  But wait a minute,  there’s more!

 

·      Ocean water is about 98% of the total amount of water on Earth and it is home to a countless number of marine species that range from microscopic plankton to 30 meters long cetaceans.  Since wide areas of marine depths have not yet been explored, establishing the exact number of species that dwell in the oceans is impossible: as a consequence the scientists think that many species are still  to be discovered.  What we know for sure is that they add to life on our planet not only as food fish, raw materials and medication but also actively contributing to the oxygen cycle as well as playing a part in the regulation of our climate.  Last but not least, ocean and sea waters grant leisure activities and relaxation to the planet’s inhabitants, thus improving the quality of their lives. 

 

·      Fresh water represents about 2% of the whole planet’s amount  but only a very small quantity of it is available for human consumption,  since about 1.6%  of the planet's water is frozen up either in glaciers or in the polar ice caps,  whereas a further  0.40 % of it swells  aquifers and flows in wells and springs.  Strange as it may sound, only a tiny 0,036% of this precious liquid makes up the rivers and lakes share.

 

·     Is it all? Of course not!   Besides wandering “lonely as a cloud” ^(*)  in the air in form of vapour, water makes up most of our body and, depending on our age, it decreases from an initial 75% of our body weight as newborn infants to a final 50% as we get older.

No wonder, then, if water has such an all-encompassing role in man’s life: from myth to history, from legend to poetry, from biology to physics, from art to literature, from rites to creed, it has always been the very core of man’s experience on Earth.

The survey you are about to start will guide you through a multi-faceted and multi-layered path where trails and subjects meet and cross, raising new questions and giving birth to new suggestions: this will lead you,  we hope, to explore grey areas, digging and delving into a wide range of fields, plunging into the world of water to  re-emerge with a new, fully-fledged awareness of the liquid element we first got to know when, still in our mother’s tummy, we fluctuated and were lulled by while waiting to be born.

 

Notes:

^(*) From: “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”(The Daffodils), by William Wordsworth, 1804