Water, Water Everywhere!

Picture of a dam

As a newspaper reporter, one of my tasks, usually during the monsoon, is to report on the amount of water stored in dam reservoirs — in other words, the volume of water.

Four reservoirs supply water to my city. Reporting on the volume of water in these reservoirs is necessary to reassure people about the availability of enough water throughout the year.

Usually, we measure the volume of water in cubic feet or cubic centimetres. A cubic foot or cubic centimetre is the volume of water in a cube-shaped container with length, breadth, and height equal to one foot or one centimetre, respectively. However, these are small units of measurement. For measuring the volume of water in reservoirs, we need large units. These units are usually TMC or MCM. TMC stands for Thousand Million Cubic Feet, and MCM is Million Cubic Metres.

Here is where my troubles begin. Newspapers are fond of using TMC as the unit, whereas the irrigation department's website mentions the water storage levels in MCM. I have to tear my hair trying to convert MCM into TMC. Can you help me figure out how to convert MCM into TMC? The storage capacities of the four reservoirs supplying water to my city are 56 MCM, 105 MCM, 301 MCM, and 363 MCM. Can you help me convert these storage capacities into TMC?

Since we are on the subject of water and volume of water, can you figure out how much water will be held by a cube-shaped container with length, breadth, and height equal to one foot each?





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Some useful links for
your career:


  • Union Public Service Commission - www.upsc.gov.in
  • IIT-Kharagpur - www.iitkgp.ac.in
  • Indian Statistical Institute - www.isical.ac.in
  • Indian Institute of Technology Madras - www.iitm.ac.in
  • Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad - www.iimahd.ernet.in
  • Indian Institute of Mass Commission - www.iimc.nic.in
  • IIT Bombay - www.iitb.ac.in
  • Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad - www.ismdhanbad.ac.in
  • Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi - www.bitmesra.ac.in
  • Central Institute of Fisheries Nautical and Engineering Training - www.cifnet.nic.in
  • Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad (Deemed University) - www.iiita.ac.in
  • Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi - www.cmfri.com
  • Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai - www.tiss.edu