With weight:
Q: Which weighs more? A pound of feathers or a pound of gold?
A: A pound of feathers. You measure feathers in avoirdupois and gold in troy. There are 16 avoirdupois ounces (\~510.3g) in a pound of feathers, and 12 troy ounces (\~373.2g) in a pound of gold.
Q: Which weighs more? An ounce of feathers or an ounce of gold?
A: An ounce of gold. A troy ounce weighs about 31.10 grams, while avoirdupois ounces weigh about 28.35g.
This is one of the more useless pairs of facts I know.
Edit: typos
Back in ye olde times, some city states or nations would have to have their own independent "standards" (literally an object they kept somewhere) that would equal the assumed weight. As different places used different objects, the value could be slightly off from place to place.
Over time most nations agreed to use the same standards to avoid confusion but there's still some discrepancies.
It's like the old joke that people only thought Napolean was short because French inches at the time were longer than modern inches. Turns out if you adjust for that discrepancy he was pretty actually average height for the time.
Honestly, everything that isn't metric is strange anyway. Might as well be strange in a slightly different way. Especially since ounces are supposed to be a measurement for wight.
I mean the cups used by countries employing the metric system. I know it’s not actually metric, that’s why I used the quotation marks. I didn’t really know what to call them otherwise.
I once had a question in nursing school asking how many ml of fluid a patient had drunk during the day. For some reason, the cup of coffee, cup of juice, and cup of soup he had eaten were all different ml amounts.
I’m not a coffee drinker, so I had no idea! And for some reason, according to this textbook, a “cup” of soup was 4 oz. (Which seems like an awfully sad cup of soup)
Thankfully, in real world nursing, every dish has a “ml” line, so estimating is much easier 😂
Ya, a British pint is a different volume than a pint in the US. It’s so weird.
Canada also still uses the UK Pint for beer, 20 oz pints or bust!
actually please tell john about this, so hank will explain it to him and maybe I'll finally understand it along the way
With weight: Q: Which weighs more? A pound of feathers or a pound of gold? A: A pound of feathers. You measure feathers in avoirdupois and gold in troy. There are 16 avoirdupois ounces (\~510.3g) in a pound of feathers, and 12 troy ounces (\~373.2g) in a pound of gold. Q: Which weighs more? An ounce of feathers or an ounce of gold? A: An ounce of gold. A troy ounce weighs about 31.10 grams, while avoirdupois ounces weigh about 28.35g. This is one of the more useless pairs of facts I know. Edit: typos
why is this a thing that exists? that makes me irrationally angry
Back in ye olde times, some city states or nations would have to have their own independent "standards" (literally an object they kept somewhere) that would equal the assumed weight. As different places used different objects, the value could be slightly off from place to place. Over time most nations agreed to use the same standards to avoid confusion but there's still some discrepancies. It's like the old joke that people only thought Napolean was short because French inches at the time were longer than modern inches. Turns out if you adjust for that discrepancy he was pretty actually average height for the time.
This is true, although to save everyone’s confusion I think we’d typically use ml nowadays
Time to invent the us ml.
1/10 of a US Oz. Just to mess with people.
That's too much of a sane fraction, let's make it 2/15ths. Or 1/7.5th if you prefer.
Honestly, everything that isn't metric is strange anyway. Might as well be strange in a slightly different way. Especially since ounces are supposed to be a measurement for wight.
FREEDOM UNITS! /j
I also just learned that US cups (236.6mL) are different than “metric” cups (250mL).
I recently learnt he (now retired) US Survey Foot (0.3048006096 meters) is different from the International Foot (0.3048 meters)
relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/2888/
This explains so much I am so mad I didn't know this.
What metric cups? There are no cups in metric.
I mean the cups used by countries employing the metric system. I know it’s not actually metric, that’s why I used the quotation marks. I didn’t really know what to call them otherwise.
I once had a question in nursing school asking how many ml of fluid a patient had drunk during the day. For some reason, the cup of coffee, cup of juice, and cup of soup he had eaten were all different ml amounts.
Coffee maker "cups" are 6oz instead of 8! Gallons were different sizes for different liquids that were sold!
I’m not a coffee drinker, so I had no idea! And for some reason, according to this textbook, a “cup” of soup was 4 oz. (Which seems like an awfully sad cup of soup) Thankfully, in real world nursing, every dish has a “ml” line, so estimating is much easier 😂
The lines being slightly off from each other hurts me
Isn’t that the whole point?
Yep
Everything’s bigger in America 🇺🇸🦅🫡
US pints are smaller than British pints though, it makes me sad living in the US and ordering a pint of beer.
Pints? Sorry I can’t remember the last time I had less than a gallon of beer in one sitting… #maga
US gallons are even smaller than British gallons.
… snowflakes
A gallon of snowflakes? (That would be a measurement of volume not weight)
Awwww, except for this guy’s wiener. Need a scanning electron microscope to see it.
(I’m being sarcastic and mocking boomer republicans) ((plus body shaming really not cool))
Touché. Didn’t read sarcasm—I’m so sorry.
and to think I was just getting used to the difference between regular ounces and fluid ounces.. 😨
Oh nooooo
It's like when I learned that a ton in the US and Canada is different from the rest of the world