Here is a way to find out how much water actually gets wasted each
day by a leaky faucet. First, take the measured amount of water from
your experiment and put it where the question mark is below.
? cup
1 minute
That is how much water was wasted in a minute. There are 1,440
minutes in one day. To find out how many cups of water would be wasted
in a day, multiply your answer by 1,440.
? cup
1 minute
x
1,440 minutes
1 day
=
Cups wasted
each day
(Example: if you caught one-sixteenth cup in one minute, that is 0.0625
cup. If you multiply 0.0625 by 1,440, that is 90 cups each day.)
There are 16 cups in one gallon. To find out how many gallons of water
would be wasted in a day, just divide the number of cups wasted by 16.
?? cups
1 day
x
1 gallon
16 cups
x
?? x 1 gallon
16 x 1 day
=
Gallons wasted
each day
(Example: if 90 cups per day were wasted, divide 90 by 16. That adds up
to 5.625 gallons a day.)
So now you know. Drips per minute add up to gallons per day. A 24-hour
drip can be a pretty big waterfall and a very big waste of a precious
natural resource.