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Re: CHAT: browsers

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Monday, February 10, 2003, 15:13
Tristan scripsit:

> In America, do you use fluid > ounzes for icecream and solid ounzes for honey?
Ice cream is indeed sold in fluid ounces, or rather in binary multiples thereof: half pints (8 fl. oz., about 236 ml), pints, quarts (= 2 pints), half gallons (= 2 quarts), gallons. Note that "ounce" has no "z"; the "z" is actually an old abbreviation sign, the same used in "viz." = "videlicet" = "namely". I suspect the story is similar in the U.K., but the unit sizes are different. The U.S. fl. oz. is about 29.6 ml, and there are 16 of them in a gallon. In the U.K., though, the fl. oz. is about 28.4 ml, but there are 20 of them in a gallon, so gallon, half gallon, pint, and quart are about 20% larger. (The U.S. is sticking to the older system here.) I don't buy honey, but I believe it's sold the same way. Genuine solids are usually sold by weight, that being easier to measure automatically (breakfast cereal, e.g., has a notice saying "Contents sold by weight, not by volume; settling may have occurred during shipping"). Nobody uses solid ounces any more; even the GNU units program knows them not. BTW, a tablespoon (unit of volume in cooking) is 20 ml in Australia, 15 ml in the U.K., and approximately 14.7 ml (exactly half a fl. oz.) in the U.S. -- First known example of political correctness: John Cowan "After Nurhachi had united all the other http://www.reutershealth.com Jurchen tribes under the leadership of the http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Manchus, his successor Abahai (1592-1643) jcowan@reutershealth.com issued an order that the name Jurchen should --S. Robert Ramsey, be banned, and from then on, they were all _The Languages of China_ to be called Manchus."

Replies

Tristan <kesuari@...>
Dirk Elzinga <dirk_elzinga@...>