School Textbook Error?

[Never Eazii]

Well, heya, my name's Noah, and I'm new here, but please forgive me for any errors i make while on the forums, thanks!

so I was doing homework in Science (9th grade) and we have finally hit Earth and space science (my best subject). so i was completing a study guide and found that a water embodiment table seemed incorrect. Now, i know that this book is outdated (I blame society on everything wrong in this cruel, cruel world.), but this is outrageous, even the study guide's questions make no sense...

"Name four ways water falls back top earth."

~supposed to be *to, i realized after a good half-hour...

Aaaany way, my main concern is this table, i screenshot it and did some math in my calculator. Now, i'm not too concerned about whether they are wrong or not, i'm concerned about what happened to the last other percent that was left out in the embodiment table...

http://imgur.com/vMkawvr

I posted the picture to imgur because it wouldn't upload for me in the "attach files" link

just copy and paste or click it (if it's a direct link) and zoom in if needed.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

They probably rounded some of the numbers off, so they don't quite add to 100. That happens pretty often in tables of percentages.

[swansont]

It's a poor example of use of significant digits, as the oceans value only has one place past the decimal, and all the rest of the numbers are given to greater precision. That truncation is probably the issue.

[Never Eazii]

It's a poor example of use of significant digits, as the oceans value only has one place past the decimal, and all the rest of the numbers are given to greater precision. That truncation is probably the issue.

Probably.

They probably rounded some of the numbers off, so they don't quite add to 100. That happens pretty often in tables of percentages.

that makes sense, but being a large corporation as they are, they should really stay on top of that. Still, no biggie, but thanks!

Edited March 20, 2014 by Jolteon Prince

[Acme]

I agree with the earlier posts on likely errors as the table stands. However, there is water in minerals that is not groundwater so a category is missing.

 

...Analyzing the ringwoodite showed that roughly 1.5 per cent of its weight was water, locked away in the mineral at the time it was formed, a bit like a time capsule. That may not seem like a lot, but when you add up the total volume of the transition zone, even that small per cent of that comes out to be a lot of water. Scientists had speculated that the transition zone could hold an abundance of water, but until now, there had been no hard evidence to confirm it.

 

"This sample really provides extremely strong confirmation that there are local wet spots deep in the Earth in this area," said Pearson, according to the news release. "That particular zone in the Earth, the transition zone, might have as much water as all the world's oceans put together."

...

source: >> http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/geekquinox/rare-mineral-fragment-points-scientists-vast-repository-underground-202351393.html;_ylt=A0SO8x.LgytTNVMAqlhXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEzMzZtdW9uBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDNARjb2xvA2dxMQR2dGlkA1ZJUDM4NV8x

[Schneibster]

Such errors are not uncommon (though fairly rare) in textbooks. I remember a problematic claim I found in one of my transistor theory textbooks that had the Dean of the electronics school shaking his head. I can think of perhaps one or two other times I've seen something like that. You're smart to have spotted it. Keep watching, it's a good habit.