We hear water figures all the time — "the reservoir lost 20 cubic hectometres", "the leak spilled a million litres", "a shower uses 60 litres" — but our brains are bad at picturing them. The tool above draws whatever amount you type using icons: each icon is something you already know (a glass, a bathtub, a tanker truck, an Olympic pool), so the figure becomes something you can count at a glance. Below it, a human equivalence: what a whole city would drink, or you yourself over the years.
The tool picks the right reference for each amount by itself (and you can change it with the "Show" selector). These are the rungs:
| Reference | Litres |
|---|---|
| 🥛 A glass of water | 0.25 |
| 🍾 A large bottle | 1.5 |
| 🧍 What one person drinks per day | 2 |
| 🏠 Household use per person per day (Spain) | 128 |
| 🛁 A full bathtub | 150 |
| 🚛 A tanker truck | 30,000 |
| 🏊 An Olympic swimming pool | 2,500,000 |
| 🌊 A cubic hectometre (the reservoir unit) | 1,000,000,000 |
Click any of these figures to see it drawn above:
Want to visualize areas or distances instead of water? Try the Hectareometer, which draws how much any number of hectares covers on a real map, the distances tool or the kilos one. You can also check examples like 1000 hectares.