George Bannister had read recently that the U.S. consumed roughly 18 million barrels of oil daily. He had been surprised that he didn't even know how many gallons of oil a barrel amounted to. He had simply gone his 40 odd something years accepting the barrel as a unit of...

My  Hyundai has about 132,000  miles on it. Given its  MPG around 23 in the city and 30 on the highway and my driving patterns, I estimate that this car has now burned roughly 5500 gallons of gasoline . 

That's a lot of gas! And calculating by the average price...