"Snooze" wrote in message
. com...


1 cubic foot is 7.48065 gallons. So 7.5 is a close enough estimate for our
needs. I think you misunderstand what 1 cubic foot is. Picture a box that
is
1 foot wide, 1 foot deep and 1 foot high. That is 1 cubic foot.

You can also think of 1 cubic foot as a box that is 12 inches wide, 12
inches deep and 12 inches high. That would give you 1728 cubic inches.
Because a water jug is not a perfect cylinder, with out making tedious
measurements and calculations, it would be difficult to calculate the
exact
volume on paper.

Ok, guys, I know that not all newsreaders perform equally, so I won't
belabor the "read the thread" point, but we have established that I typed
one thing while I was thinking another. Derek smoothly pointed out, just in
case I was actually confused, that I must have meant "cubic", even though I
typed "square". And, in my answer, I confirmed that I did indeed understand
the difference. So, please no more assumptions that I am one power short of
volume measurement. Also, I realize now, that 12 cubic inches can refer to
a single row of 12 cubes of one cubic inch each. My mistake was to cube
the 12 in my head, but not in my typing. Sorry for the sloppy description
of my thought processes. The whole point I was trying to make and clarify
for myself is that if you took seven and a half gallon jugs and poured them
into a container, they would fill a "lot" of space, and that "box" that is
12 inches in each direction didn't seem, in my mind, to be big enough to
hold it all. Does this not resonate with anyone, here? I have had several
people react in disbelief when they were present as I was working out the
volume of possible pond configurations, and they heard for the first time
how many gallons of water were in a cubic foot.

Perhaps an easy way to satisfy your curiosity, would be to take a 1 cubic
foot box, fill it with rice, then slowly pour the rice from the box into
the
5 gallon jug. You will see that when the jug is full, you still have about
1/3rd the rice still in the box. I hope that this was able to improve your
mental image.

If I knew where to get a water-tight box like that, I would try it, just to
see. I don't want to go get a bunch of rice or sand. I have plenty of
water. I do appreciate your understanding that this is just a curiosity
issue on my part. I think crash thought I wasn't willing to use the
conversion factor because it was hard for me to picture in my head.




PS before engineers were able to calculate the volume of awkward shapes,
such as the interior of a car on a computer, one of the techniques they
used, was to pour foam peanuts in from a hole in the roof, and keep track
of
how many bags of foam peanuts it took to fill the inside. Otherwise they
had
to make estimates by making many measurements and calculations of smaller
chunks of the car, and adding up all those chunks.

Can't resist: was each bag of peanuts shaped like a cubic foot? Still,
that's pretty interesting. I wonder what they did before we had foam
peanuts. Rice would be hard to clean out of a car.