An Olympic swimming pool is 50 m long, 25 m wide and at least 2 m deep. How many litres of water does it take to fill one?
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Answer
About 2.5 million litres
Depth matters to swimmers: the Paris 2024 pool was only 2.15 m deep instead of the 3 m that World Aquatics recommends, and many blamed the shallow water for the lack of world records.
How to estimate it
The pool is a box, so multiply its three sides: 50 × 25 × 2 = 2,500 cubic metres. One cubic metre holds 1,000 litres, so the pool needs 2,500 × 1,000 = 2,500,000 litres. That is roughly what a person drinks in 3,000 years. Deeper competition pools hold more, but the standard answer is 2.5 million litres.
Source: World Aquatics (pool dimensions)
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