Convert Barrel (Oil) (bbl (oil)) to Attoliter (aL) instantly.
About these units
Barrel (Oil) (bbl (oil))
An oil barrel is defined as 42 US gallons, or 158.987 liters, and is a fundamental unit in the petroleum industry. This peculiar size traces back to the early Pennsylvania oil fields, where producers standardized whiskey barrels and modified wooden casks for oil transport. The need for consistent trade volumes cemented the 42-gallon barrel as the industry norm. Today, global oil production, pricing, and consumption are expressed in barrels—from daily OPEC reports to energy market forecasts. Even though oil is no longer physically shipped in barrels, the unit remains deeply embedded in international energy economics.
Attoliter (aL)
An attoliter is a staggering 10⁻¹⁸ liters, placing it firmly in the realm of molecular and nanoscale science. This unimaginably small volume corresponds to spaces comparable to the inside of viruses, nanopores, or clusters of biomolecules. Cutting-edge technologies like nano-droplet reactors, atomic force microscopy, and high-precision spectroscopy rely on attoliters to describe reaction chambers or sample sizes. The attoliter is so small that even a single bacterial cell has a volume approximately one million attoliters. This makes the unit essential for exploring the physical limits of chemical reactions and biological processes.