The recent wild fluctuations in gas prices caused intense discussion among my friends and family. As is often the case, the conversations turned to comparisons between the cost here in Canada versus the cost in the U.S. Because we talk about gas in liters and the U.S. talks about it in gallons, the differential between prices was completely lost on me (as was my father’s disgust at the higher costs on our side of the border).
If I had had any idea at all about the number of liters in a gallon, I might have been as outraged as my father. Having been raised with the glorious simplicity of the metric system, I was never interested in learning about the U.S. Imperial system, a method of measuring that I found completely baffling.
Really, what could be easier than a decimal-based system? Conversion from one unit to another requires a very simple multiplication by ten (ten millimeters in a centimeter) or 100 (100 centimeters in a meter) or 1,000 (1,000 meters in a kilometers).
In the metric system, volume is measured in a base unit called a liter. When we want to describe something smaller than a liter, we use milliliters, a unit that is 1/1000th of a liter. The conversion from liters to milliliters involves nothing more than moving the decimal 3 places to the right. For example, 1.141 liters would convert to 1,141 milliliters. In comparison, the Imperial system seems utterly confusing to me. How can someone who knows that there are 1,000 milliliters in a liter possibly comprehend that there are 8 ounces in a cup, 2 cups in a pint and 2 pints in a quart, but 4 quarts in a gallon?
Well, ultimately, curiosity got the best of me and I decided to do the conversion to figure out whether the difference in gas prices really was as significant as everyone claimed.
I used the table below, which provides the conversion factor for some common volume measurements. Multiply the unit by the factor to do the conversion. For example, 10 liters X .2642 = 2.6 gallons.
- liters to pints 2.1133
- liters to quarts 1.0567
- liters to gallons .2642
- milliliters to ounces .0338
- ounces to milliliters 29.5735
- pints to liters .4732
- quarts to liters 1.1365
- gallons to liters 3.7854
Now, if I do the math, based on current average gas prices, the American cost of $2.34 per gallon should work out to about 62 cents per liter. But the last price I saw posted here was 91cents per liter. I guess I’d better call my dad – I have some complaining to do.