what area of floor in m2 would 5 liters of water cover?

Question

assuming the floor was non porus and totally flat , what area would the water cover

just to clarify , its not 2 meters squared, its what area of floor would the 5 liters cover
I know what i mean but guess it didnt come out right

thank you all for your answers.
The project I was given was to work out how many buckets of water would it take to mop a floor 100m x 100m.
Hence the question , my problem I suppose is i dont know the depth of the water on the floor post mopping

Answer 1

How thinly-spread is the water supposed to be?

5 l water is 5000 cubic cm, so ...

At 1 cm depth, you'll have enough water to cover 0.5 square meters (i.e. 5000 square cm).

At 1 mm depth, you'll have enough water to cover 5 square meters (i.e. 50000 square cm)

At 1 molecule's depth, you'd probably be able to cover most of Britain.

Learn to think in three dimensions, people!

Answer 2

The answer to this interesting question depends entirely on how thick the water layer will be.

So, I have done an experiment pouring some water on a polished table and found that the water layer remained about 2mm thick.

Now 5 litres water occupies a vol of 5/1000 cu.m and if the water layer is 2 mm thick, the area covered will be 5/1000 x 500 = 2.5 sq.m

Answer 3

A few interesting answers so far, but ALL missing a basic fundamental property of water.

Surface tension.

It's what causes it to form as a 'bubble' and exhibit 'pooling'.

In the real world, a litre of water carefully poured on a flat, non-porus surface (such as clean glass) covers around a 0.5 square metres - (or 4.5 square feet) from a bit of experimentation 5 minutes ago!!. Not sure about the surface tension / liquid volume corelation to scale this up to 5 litres - but it's likely to be around 2.5 m2 ie. 1m x 2.5m

Answer 4

1 liter is 1000 ml and 1ml will is one cm^3 of volume.

So, 1 liter would cover 1000 cm^3.

5 liters would be 5000 cm^3 of volume (or .005 m^3).

If you assume that "flat" means 1cm deep then:

L x W x 1cm will equal 5000 cm^3

L x W = 5000 cm^2 of area or .5m^2.

If flat is only 1mm deep then:

L x W x 1mm (or .1cm) = 5000 cm^3
L x W = 5m^2

You can see as the water gets "flatter" the area gets larger.

However, a flatness of zero is not solveable since:

L x W x 0 depth = 5000 cm^3
L x W = 5000 / 0 depth

And anything divided by zero is undefined.

Regards,

Mysstere

Answer 5

One bucketful should do. Just mop it around the floor.
I can easily wash my car with half a bucket of water and, for that, it all ends up on the drive. In your example you can mop it back up and squeeze it back into the bucket!

Answer 6

Do you mean 2 square metres?

Why not measure 2 square metres out and pour 5 litres of water over it

Answer 7

doesnt matter how large the surface area, water will by gravity, splay out eventually to cover the whole area, it might be an immeasurably thin depth of water, but it will cover anyway.

Answer 8

5 liters of water = 0.005 cubic meters (m3) of water..

the area coverd would be depending on how thick you want the water to be distributed on this floor..

Answer 9

1 kilo litre=1m^3
1000 litre=1m^3
5 litre=5/1000m^3
.005m^2*1m
so per metre of thickness
it will coner anarea of 0.005 m^2

Answer 10

its one of them un-answerable questions