Converting to Gallons for Dummies

US and Imperial gallons, compared

We are well aware that the world-wide web is, indeed, world-wide. Since many of us are of a scientific bent, we tend to be aware of the multitude of conversion factors necessitated by the rather bizarre units used in the Imperial system, especially as compared to metric units. We suspect, however, that a British journalism grad would not be our first choice for attempting to explain some of those conversions We base that suspicion on the lousy job eHow.com's Mark Slingo performed on "How to Convert a Container Size to Gallons" at HomeSteady.com.

Slingo went straight to a conversion website and copied down A) the conversion factors and B) examples of their use. We will give Mark this much, he does a fine job of copy-and-paste; since he got all four of his conversion factors and his examples right... as far as he went, anyway.

You see, Mark demonstrated the problem of short-sightedness: he only provided four conversion factors and two of them were essentially the same. Yes, the conversion factor for liters to gallons is exactly 1,000 times the conversion factor for cubic centimeters to gallons: what a surprise!
Slingo also gave his readers conversions for fluid ounces to gallons and pints to gallons, again demonstrating his facility with the copy-paste function on his keyboard. Where he went wonky, however, was an oddly British take on the question, in which he didn't bother to regurgitate the conversion factors for cubic feet to gallons or cubic inches to gallons. Weird, huh? Well, here they are:

1 ft³ = 7.48 US gallons, or 1 US gallon  = 0.1337 ft³

1 in³ = 0.00433 US gallons, or 1 US gallon = 231 in³

But wait: why did we say "US gallons"? Is there some other kind? Indeed there is, and Slingo, being a Brit, ought to have known – and definitely mentioned – that difference. There's also a liquid volume known as the Imperial gallon, which is used... in the United Kingdom! Yup, this gallon (which is slightly more than 1.2 US gallons) is the gallon that Slingo uses whenever he buys more petrol for his motor. And this is a dude who opened his post be telling us that,

"Different countries use different measuring systems for liquid containers."

No duh: now you know why we think Mark should be the Dumbass of the Day!

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