Re: Gallons in an Olympic Swimming Pool?

[Ad absurdum per aspera <JTCHEW -at- LBL -dot- GOV>]

re_allen -at- pnl -dot- gov (Robert E. Allen) wrote:

> Anyone know how many gallons in an Olympic swimming pool?
> Or the dimensions of an Olympic pool?  (Is the bottom flat
> or sloping?)

It goes up and down with the amount of hydrogen under the salt
cake...  ah, never mind. :)

You might want to ask on rec.sport.olympics (or rec.sport.swimming;
I'd suggest rec.sport.waterpolo but they're too tough to care
about swimming in radwaste).  I recall reading that the frequently
heard expression "Olympic-size swimming pool" is marketing hype,
and that beyond a minimum depth and an understanding that the
length will be that of a customary leg in modern swimming events,
the venue has some discretion in determining its size.

My handy cheat sheet says that a gallon is 231 cubic inches, also
known as 3.785 liters, which is easy to remember because Buick
used to call their V6 the 231 and then started calling it the 3.8
(about the time they started mixing metric and SAE fasteners on
the same *^%&@#! subsystems, but I digress).  That gives us 7.48
gallons to the cubic foot, or about 8.69 million cubic feet of
mixed radioactive and toxic Cold War souvenirs bubbling away.
Guesstimating an Olympic pool to be 25 x 25 x 2.5 m (keeps the
numbers nice and round), you can fill up 517 pools, or one per
Olympiad for the next 2086 years.

Pools with perfectly flat bottoms don't drain or clean out very
well, but a serious competition pool probably wouldn't slope up
to a kids' section like a regular public pool either. They have
to be deep enough for a flat dive at one end and a kick turn at
the other, and you wouldn't want the water polo guys to be able
to stand up, especially at just one team's end.

Joe
"Just another personal opinion from the People's Republic of Berkeley"
Disclaimer: Even if my employer had a position on the subject,
I probably wouldn't be the one stating it on their behalf.