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I really wanted to know how high waterfalls needed to be to be counted as waterfall!

by Emma Bignell
(England)

This made me think about how high it really has to be (would never have thought about this otherwise). I can take this back to my Geography class and say I really thought about this. Thank you Emma Bignell.

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I really wanted to know how high waterfalls needed to be to be counted as waterfall!

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Mar 25, 2009
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starstarstarstarstar 		Subjective Answer
by: World of Waterfalls

Unfortunately, people have varying height thresholds for how tall a waterfall must be in order to count. And in many cases, these people (us included) may have varying standards depending on the characteristics of the waterfall itself.

I know some people throw in like 5ft or 15ft or 5m or even 10m as thresholds, but they're all arbitrary. No science behind it.

Maybe a scientific criteria can be how aerated (i.e. the presence of whitewater) the water in the stream needs to be in order to tie this somehow into the minimum height of the waterfall.

In any case, we've thrown in an aesthetic criteria where the waterfall can count even if it's 5 or 10ft depending on its width. Because a 5 or 10ft waterfall spanning the width of a river might blend into rapids and not count at all. That's why it depends aesthetically to the observer if it indeed looks like a waterfall and acts like one regardless of a height threshold.

Again, it's all subjective and I doubt there's a definitive answer to your question.

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