How Realistic Is It To Ask Someone To “Cry A River”?

thing are getting pretty emotional in the English metropolis of Leicester at the second , where the local association football team has just pulled off what many are describing as the most improbable sporting fairy story of all time by winning the Premier League – despite pop the season as5,000 - to - oneoutsiders . Inspired by the tears of joy being spilled all around them , a dyad of bookman at the University of Leicester has just published a new paper investigating whether or not it really is possible to make good on the famous Justin Timberlake call and “ cry a river . ”

apparently , no single soul could ever weep enough to fill an entire natural watercourse , no matter how emotionally fragile they may be . Therefore , the study – which appear in theJournal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics – accept into account the entire universe of   Earth , seek to determine if the planet ’s 7.4 billion denizen could holler a river in one 24-hour interval .

To make it a little easier on our tear ducts , the study source pick out the Roe River in Montana as their bench mark , which , at just 61 meters ( 200 foot ) long , is the unforesightful in the existence , with a minimum daily body of water menses of 709,190,040 liters ( 156 million gal ) .

With the middling tear measure 6.3 micro liter , it isestimatedthat if a someone was to   sob solidly for an intact day , their full watery-eyed firing would be 1,728 micro liters . After doing the maths , the study source lamentably report that , even if every somebody on the planet cried that amount , the Roe River would still stay on less than full .

However , clearly not river - half - empty multitude , the researchers fetch up their report on a somewhat sunny note of hand , by compute that , if we all pull together as a coinage and pool our tears , the humans of satellite Earth would be capable to fill a … er … pool .

In fact , with an Olympian sized swim syndicate holding 2.5 million liters ( 660,000 gallon ) of water , we ’d actually only have to spill 55 tears each so as to fill it , which think of we ’d have the residuum of the day free to do other stuff .

Unfortunately , though , “ cry me a swim pool ” is n’t quite as catchy as a song deed .