Measuring Rainfall (acres/inches)

Date: 10 Jun 1995 09:59:20 -0400
From: Gary Campbell
Subject: Rainfall

Here's a question for you!
 
How many gallons of water are there when 1" of rain falls on 
1 acre.

I calculated it to be ...my answer looks wrong!
 
thanks for your help.
Gary Campbell

Date: 12 Jun 1995 11:49:33 -0400
From: Dr. Ethan
Subject: Rainfall

Hey Gary,

Here is how we did it.

        We found in a dictionary that an acre is 43,560 square feet.  To
put this into square inches we multiplied by 144 to get 6,272,640, 
because that is how many square inches are in a square foot.  Since it 
was just one inch of rainfall, that is also how many cubic inches of 
water fell.

        Now we again look in the dictionary to find that there are 231 cubic
inches in a gallon, so we divide by 231 to get the number of gallons, 
which is 

                 27154.29

That is a lot of water.

Hope this makes sense to you.
Ethan  - Doctor On Call