[badrequest]

I would imagine most Americans on this website are capable of comprehending liters.

[tshaddox]

I'm an American, and I like to think that I can comprehend liters, but I think for enormous volumes like this it's easier to visualize distances cubed.

Like for a million cubic miles, I know that's a cube with 1,000 mile sides. That's like New York to Miami (don't ask me about cities in Europe...okay I'll go out on a limb: Paris to Rome?). I can visualize that cube of water on a globe.

But how many liters or gallons is that? A lot! But billions? Trillions? I probably would instinctively say billions, but with a tiny bit of mental arithmetic I'm suspecting it's up in the trillions.

edit: I came back to confess that indeed I am an ignorant American who has no intuitive sense of exaliters. My SI volume comfort zone doesn't extend much past teraliters.

[glenjamin]

Are you suggesting that most americans have a good grasp of how much water a cubic mile is?

Surely the standard unit for this sort of thing is multiples of well known large lakes or seas?

[huygens6363]

I refuse to acknowledge anything but multiples of Libraries of Congress.

[dgfitz]

A cubic mile isn't a widely-used measurement of volume. Everyone knows what a 2-liter of soda looks like.

[marcellus23]

Just picture how long a mile is, and then imagine a cube where each side is that long.