I behind tried to construct a custom-sized aquarium for a extremely specific breed of bioluminescent shrimp I bought from a boy in a dark alley. Okay, maybe it wasn't a dark alley, but it was extremely a subjective 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 as soon as I was bothersome to solve a riddle posed by some ancient math-obsessed sphinx.

Calculations are annoying. They just are. We enliven in a world where we desire the volume of our coffee mugs and our garden ponds to just magically appear in our heads. But the universe demands honor in the form of arithmetic. If you have ever felt physically ill-treated by the sight of a measuring tape, you are calculate gallons in an aquarium the right place. Lets break next to the logic of liquid volume without making your brain leak out of your ears.

Before we get into the "how," lets chat roughly the "why." Why pull off 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.