25-65 gallons
95 -246 liters
Not useful because they vary so much in size, but reporters still use them because bathtubs are prettier to look at in an illustration than trash cans or oil drums.
30 gallons
113.6 liters
Most old fashioned outdoor trashcans hold about 30 gallons of liquid. This much water (at 8.35 pounds per gallon) weighs a little over 250 pounds.
42 gallons.
About 159 liters.
Abbreviation in the news is bbl, for blue barrel.
55 gallons
208.2 liters
These are the barrels we see in alleyways and many chemical storage sites.
Large fuel delivery truck
8,000 gallons for a single large tank on a gasoline delivery truck. About 530 cars (at 15 gallons per car) can be filled with one load. At a retail price of $2.50 per gallon each truck is carrying about $200,000 worth of cargo.
About 30,000 gallons
660,253 gallons
88,263 cubic feet
7,500,000 liters
7,500 cubic meters
2.03 acre-feet
An Olympic sized pool is 25 meters x 50 meters.
if it were 2 meters deep it would hold 7,500 cubic meters, or 660,253 gallons of water. A little over 2 acre-feet of water in one swimming pool. The surface area of an Olympic pool is over a quarter of an acre.
Capacity of a petroleum supertanker
2 million barrels of crude oil
A drop of water, as used in most scientific articles and textbooks is 1/20 of a millliLiter or .05 mL per drop. Your household eyedropper probably produces drops very close to this size. Click here for a closer look.
MilliLiter (mL) and
These units come up in news stories regularly. The two are exactly the same thing, and can be used interchangeably if you wish. CCs are usually used when measuring the volume of solid objects like motorcycle engines. The mL name is used in academic and scientific papers, and is quickly replacing the cc in technology and medical stories. Doctors and nurses sometimes use both terms in the same sentence.
One milliLiter (or cubic centimeter) is equal to a cube of liquid one centimeter long on each side. Smaller than a sugar cube but larger than a pea. It takes almost 5 mL to equal one US teaspoon. One milliLiter of water weighs exactly one gram.
Teaspoons and tablespoons (US)
Fluid ounce (US)
One US fluid ounce is two US tablespoons, and if it’s water it weighs one ounce.
Cup (US)
Usually used for dry measurements in cooking. As a liquid measurement, a US cup is 8 fluid ounces
Pint (US)
2 cups. One pint of water weighs exactly one pound.
Quart (US)
2 Pints. Just a little smaller than a liter (about .95 L). One quart of water weighs 2 pounds.
Liter
A liter of water weighs exactly one kilogram, which is about 2.2 pounds. A liter is about 3 1/2 tablespoons more than a quart.
Gallon (US)
About 3.79 liters. A gallon of water weighs about 8.35 pounds. A gallon of gasoline is much lighter, at around 6.1 pounds, depending on the temperature and grade of fuel.
Cubic foot
About 7 1/2 gallons, or 28.31 liters. In the US many water districts bill their customers by the number of cubic feet that they use. Natural gas use is often reported in cubic feet as well.
Cubic meter
One cubic meter is 1,000 liters. If it’s water it weighs 2,200 pounds.
Cubic yard
Usually used for dry measures.
Acre-foot
1 acre (43,560 sq ft) by 1 foot deep.
It takes about 2 acre feet to fill an olympic sized swimming pool.
1 acre-foot = 325,851.gallons
==================
Liquids: From drops and gallons to liters and oceans
The liquid volume units most likely to appear in news stories in the United States, and calculators to help you move between them. Presented in order of size.
Easy unit converter for liquid volumes
Make hard numbers easy:
If you are starting with a number in exponential notation
(like 1.67x1021 for instance),
format it as 1.67e21 and choose your measurement units in the calculator as usual. This formatting works in most calculators and converters.
Objects often used in the news to visualize liquid quantities:
Home Calculators Dimensions Visualizations
