Le 2011/10/03 12:13, Darren New a écrit :
> Just for those who never grew up around explosive barrels...
>
> The barrels in things like HL2 are what Americans call "55 gallon
> drums." It's how things like grease or oil for your automobile gets
> shipped to retailers like service stations or auto dealers.
>
> 55 gallons is the amount of oil in a "barrel of oil."
>
> So when you hear on the news that some country is exporting 2 million
> barrels a day of oil or something, you have an idea what they mean. A
> barrel of oil is the size of one of the barrels in HL2 (or most other
> games, for that matter), aka a "55-gallon drum."
>
> Impress your metric friends with this obscure knowledge, brought to you
> by someone whose dad owned a gas station for many years.

And, outside the USA, they are 40 /imperial/ gallons drums, not 55 /US/ 
gallons.

One of the reasons behind the secession was the systematic shortchanging 
imposed by England.
They sold you goods using the US gallon, but bought goods using the 
bigger Imperial Gallons.
The dollar is also a colonial curency. Originaly, it's value was $1 = 
1£, then got depreciated down to 1£ = $2.

I always wonder WHY the USA kept that colonial mesurment system. The 
metric system did exist at that time. Back then, it would have been easy 
to adopt the metric system and ditch the hated imperial system.


Alain

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