Acre-foot facts for kids
Quick facts for kids acre-foot |
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An acre-foot volume (not drawn to scale)
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| General information | |
| Unit system | US Customary units |
| Unit of | Volume |
| Symbol | ac⋅ft |
| Conversions | |
| 1 ac⋅ft in ... | ... is equal to ... |
| SI units | ≈ 1,233.5 m3 |
| US customary units | 43,560 cu ft |
| US customary units | ≈ 325,850 US gal |
| Imperial units | ≈ 271,330 imp gal |
The acre-foot is a special unit of measurement for volume. It's mostly used in the United States to talk about really big amounts of water. Think of it when people discuss water in reservoirs, aqueducts, or how much water is needed for irrigation.
One acre-foot is a huge amount of water! To give you an idea, it's about the same volume as an eight-lane swimming pool. This pool would be about 25 m (82 ft) long, 16 m (52 ft) wide, and 3 m (9.8 ft) deep.
Contents
What is an Acre-Foot?
An acre-foot is easy to understand once you know its parts. It's the amount of water that would cover one acre of land to a depth of one foot.
- An acre is a unit of area, like a big field.
- A foot is a unit of length, about the size of a ruler.
So, imagine a field that is one acre big. If you filled that field with water until it was one foot deep, that amount of water would be one acre-foot.
To be more exact, one acre-foot is equal to 43,560 cubic feet (1,233.5 m3) cubic feet. That's a lot of cubic feet!
How is an Acre-Foot Used?
The acre-foot is super important for managing water in the United States. It helps people understand and plan how much water is available or needed.
Water for Homes
As a general rule, one acre-foot is thought to be the amount of water a typical family living in the suburbs might use in a whole year. However, in places like the desert Southwest, where saving water is very important, a family might use much less. They might use only about 0.25 acre-foot of water per year.
Measuring Big Water Projects
The acre-foot per year is a unit used in many agreements about water. For example, the Colorado River Compact uses this unit. This agreement helps divide a huge amount of water, about 15×106 acre⋅ft/a (590 m3/s), among seven states in the western US.
When you hear about the size of water reservoirs in the US, their capacity is often given in thousands of acre-feet. This is sometimes shortened to TAF or KAF.
Acre-Foot and the Metric System
Most other countries around the world use the metric system. They measure water volumes in liters, cubic meters, or even cubic kilometers for very large amounts.
One acre-foot is roughly the same as 1.233 megaliters. A megaliter is one million liters. For really huge bodies of water, like large lakes, they might use cubic kilometers. One million acre-feet is about 1.233 cubic kilometers.
See also
In Spanish: Acre-pie para niños
- Cubic meter per second
- Cubic foot per second
- List of unusual units of measurement
- United States customary units
- Unit of measurement
