[USMA:42208] Re: A pint's a pound the whole world round

[Jon Saxton]

I never heard that rhyme until I read it on this list.  I assume it is based on the idea that there are 16 ounces in a pound and 16 fluid ounces in a pint.  If a fluid ounce of something weighs one ounce then in a sense the pint and pound are equivalent.  Of course it depends on what you fill the pint container with.  A pint of naphtha would be somewhat lighter than a pound, whereas a pint of mercury would be much heavier. So what is the substance which makes the rhyming equation true?  The most likely candidate is water.  So presumably the rhyme says 16 oz of water is a pint or a pound, "the whole world round". I grew up in Australia using British pints of 20 oz so it would have been plain wrong there and it is not surprising that the rhyme was not part of my culture.  Only in the USA is the 16 oz pint used.  Since 1824 the pint used in all other English-speaking countries was the 20 oz pint of my youth.  The part that says "the whole world round" is simply wrong. Interestingly enough, the rhyme is wrong in the USA as well.  A pint is simply not equivalent to a pound.  The USA inherited the pint  from the UK as it was at the end of the 18th century.  The gallon of the time was the Queen Ann "wine gallon" of 1707 based on the volume of eight troy pounds of wine.  Because the USA seceded from the British Empire in the latter part of the 18th century it did not adopt the 1824 uniform redefinition of the gallon as the volume occupied by 10 lb (avoirdupois) of distilled water (measured at 62ºF in air at a pressure of 30" of mercury *).  The British ounce of water by weight and by volume were established as equivalent.  The volume of a UK (Imperial) gallon worked out at a bit over 277 in³ or 4.55 L whereas the US gallon (i.e. the old wine gallon) was 231 in³ or 3.79 L.  There are 160 fluid ounces to the Imperial gallon which, as mentioned above, preserves the water weight/volume relationship.  A UK fluid ounce is about 1.74 in³ or 28.4 ml.  However the USA divides its gallon into 128 fluid ounces which means each fl oz is about 1.80 in³ or 29.6 ml.  So a US pint of 16 US fluid ounces of water weighs about 4% more than a pound. So the "whole world round" part is not true in the USA either.  It is just wrong everywhere^. *Ref:  R. D. Connor, The Weights and Measures of England, Science Museum, London, 1987.  ISBN 0 11 290435 1 ^This discussion only addresses liquid measures.  When we bring dry pints into consideration then we have a whole new set of ways for the rhyme to be wrong. James Frysinger wrote: I was fortunate in the 7th grade; our math teacher ignored the school board and taught us algebra. However in the 8th grade, we had a math teacher who started off by saying that he hated math and was just waiting until a coaching job came up at the high school (grades 9 to 12). The only thing I recall doing that year (apart from mischief) was spending untold hours memorizing U.S. customary weights and measures tables and key facts, such as the number of square feet in an acre. I think the rest of the year must have been spent on arithmetic, working percentage and interest problems, for example. One of the essential facts that we learned was "a pint's a pound the whole world 'round" and my parents said they had learned that in school, too. My recollection is that this was given as a "rule of thumb" and not an exact conversion and one easy to memorize because both a pint and a pound comprised 16 ounces (albeit of different natures). So it was also a reinforcement of the facts that a pint contains 16 fluid ounces and a pound avoirdupois contains 16 ounces avoirdupois. Yes, we learned all about Troy pounds and ounces, too. I think our textbook in that 8th year had been published in 1811, just before the British set fire to the White House. (I'm just kidding about the publication date; the arson is fairly well accepted as fact.) By the way, my father and his brothers had the same teacher for their 7th grade math classes and she taught them algebra, too. They recalled her as being old to the point of being ready for retirement at the time they had her. Jim Pat Naughtin wrote: Dear All, I was looking for the origins of the maxim, 'A pint's a pound the whole world round' when I happened on this reference at http://makezine.com/16/diyhome_measure/#msg3308 where they say: There's a difference between a U.S. pint (16 fl oz) and an Imperial pint (20 fl oz), which means that a pint's a pound only in the USA. An Imperial gallon of water weighs ten pounds, which means, (if I've got my old pre-metrication sums right) that a fluid ounce of water weighs an ounce. Now, it seems that the U.S. gallon is also different from the U.S. gallon, which make sense. Does anyone have any 'Rules of thumb' that apply to gallons, quarts, pints, and fluid ounces in the USA. Cheers,   Pat Naughtin PO Box 305 Belmont 3216, Geelong, Australia Phone: 61 3 5241 2008 Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. 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