Musicians Arthur Hamilton, Justin Timberlake and unsympathetic people across the world have encouraged others to ‘cry me a river’.
University of Leicester Natural Sciences students Leah Ashley and Robbie Roe have examined the plausibility of people around the world crying enough tears to create a river, based on the flow rate of the world’s shortest river – the Roe River in Montana.
It was decided that in order to cry a river the best way to model it would be to use the amount of water that flows through it in a day. The Roe River is known to discharge at its slowest flow approximately 709,190,040 litres per day.
The average volume of a human tear is around 6.2 micro litres. Even if everyone on Earth was feeling particularly crestfallen they wouldn’t be able to cry a river. However, the students found they could fill an Olympic-size swimming pool.
The students calculated an Olympic swimming pool could be filled if everyone cried 55 tears – an amount which was possibly produced last night when #nevertrumpers learned Trump is now the presumptive nominee.
The paper ‘Is it possible to cry a river?’ is available here:https://physics.le.ac.uk/jist/index.php/JIST/article/view/186
Excerpts taken from Is It Possible To Cry A River – Newswise
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