Lesson 12 — Activity 3: Capacity


Getting Ready


You have also previously looked at what capacity is. Remember that capacity is the amount a container can hold.


This activity will focus on the imperial units associated with capacity.

               The imperial units of capacity are shown here.                   

Try This:


Which units do you think you would use to measure the capacity of the following:

  • The amount of milk in a cake recipe: a cup or a gallon?
  • The amount of gas in your car: quarts or gallons?
  • The amount of water in a fish tank: cups or gallons?



You would use a cup to measure the amount of milk in a cake recipe.


You would use gallons when thinking about the amount of gas for your car.


You would also use gallons if you were filling up a fish tank.




There are four main units for measuring capacity in the imperial system. They are cups, pints, quarts, and gallons.


This chart shows a comparison of these units:

Comparion Chart showing the imperial units of capacity.


Digging Deeper

Watch this light-hearted video to see a further comparison of these units.





There are two different types of gallons in North America. The US gallon is slightly different than the Canadian gallon.


US Gallon

A US gallon is 3.785 litres. If you think of a 4 L container of milk, a US gallon would be slightly smaller than the milk container. If you look at a jerry can, it may list the capacity in both US gallons and litres.


Canadian Gallon

A Canadian gallon is 4.54 litres. It is bigger than a US gallon. It would be slightly bigger than a 4 L container of milk.

This shows a 4 litre container of milk.
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