I once tried to construct a custom-sized aquarium heater calculator for a no question specific breed of bioluminescent shrimp I bought from a guy in a dark alley. Okay, most likely it wasn't a dark alley, but it was very a sketchy Craigslist ad. I had the glass. I had the silicone. I had a ruler that was missing the first three millimeters. What I didnt have was a clue. I kept staring at the glass panels, wondering, "Wait, how to determine litres from centimeters?" It felt later I was aggravating to solve a riddle posed by some ancient math-obsessed sphinx.

Calculations are annoying. They just are. We liven up in a world where we want the volume of our coffee mugs and our garden ponds to just magically appear in our heads. But the universe demands praise in the form of arithmetic. If you have ever felt physically distressed by the sight of a measuring tape, you are in the right place. Lets rupture beside the logic of liquid volume without making your brain leak out of your ears.

Before we acquire into the "how," lets chat very nearly the "why." Why realize we use centimeters at all? Why not inches? Or cubits? Or the length of a medium-sized banana? Centimeters are glorious because they belong to the metric system. The metric system is a neat, tidy room where anything fits into boxes of ten. It is the Marie Kondo of measurement systems.