Everyone in England knows that "a pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter", and in the US children are told "a pint's a pound the world around".
Of course, the simplistic view of this is the following: a pint in the UK is 20 fl oz, whereas in the US it is 16 fl oz. This of course makes the rhymes consistent.
Until you investigate a little further, and discover that fluid ounces differ in the two countries too. The UK fluid ounce is small than that in the US, with 1 fl oz (UK) about equal to 0.96 fl oz (US). That is, the US version is about 4% bigger. And as to the weight? Well, the British rhyme is a lot closer to correct than the US version: the correct version of the US rhyme would be something like
A pint's a pound the world around, or it would be if it went on a diet
Yours, giving you the skinny,
N.
Musings on life, bread and other necessities.
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2 comments:
thank you kind sir. i always knew the the gallon here was larger than in the US....but then my head got all messed up with litres vs gallons and it made no sense that the price of gas in the US is cheaper than here. However, not by much anymore. It used to be so much different.
I'm still an imperial girl. metric? I fake it.
lol. You've lost me N! But then I was brought up somewhere inbetween the changeover of imperial to metric. I measure long distances with miles, short with cms, ingredients always with ounces. It's easy to get confused.
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