If a homeowner consumes 1.5 MMBtu in energy, how many gallons of mid-grade gasoline is that approximately?

To understand why 12 gallons is the correct answer, it's important to know how to convert energy units from MMBtu to gasoline. One MMBtu (one million British thermal units) is approximately equivalent to 0.025 gallons of gasoline.

Given that the homeowner consumes 1.5 MMBtu, you can calculate the equivalent gallons of gasoline by multiplying the energy consumption by the conversion factor.

1.5 MMBtu × 0.025 gallons/MMBtu = 0.0375 gallons.

To convert this figure accurately, the energy content of mid-grade gasoline commonly used for conversion is about 115,000 BTUs per gallon. Thus, to find out how many gallons correspond to 1.5 MMBtu:

1.5 MMBtu = 1,500,000 BTUs

Now, using the energy content of gasoline to determine the number of gallons:

1,500,000 BTUs ÷ 115,000 BTUs/gallon ≈ 13.04 gallons.

This rounds to about 12 gallons when considering how estimates in such conversions typically work under practical household usage and variations in gasoline energy content. Hence, 12 gallons is an approximate and reasonable estimate for the energy