A particular dam contains approximately 1,100,000,000 cubic feet of water. For a week long spike flood, water was released at a rate of 25,200 cubic feet per second

Question

A. How much water was released during the flood?

B. What percentage of the dam was released during the flood?

Answer 1

Since the rate of water release is 25,200 cubic feet per second, if we multiply by the number of seconds the water ran, we will get the number of cubic feet released.

1 week x 7days/week x 24 hrs/day x 60 min/hr x 60 sec/min = 604,800 seconds

25,200 cubic feet per second x 604,800 seconds = 1.524 x 10¹⁰ cubic feet. HOWEVER, there is only 1.1 x 10⁹ cubic feet behind the dam so obviously it didn't run at 25,200 cubic feet per second for the entire week. (The amount we calculated is 1386% of what was available.)

I suppose we could say 100% of the dam water was released.