James:
Not squinting too hard at all. The part that I object to is the "whole
world 'round" phrase. I see a gross error based on a common
misconception that the rest of the world is tuned to the standards,
culture and mores of the USA. That the doggerel rhyme is also
inaccurate in the USA is incidental.
I am going to shut up now because this is not really relevant to the job
at hand, namely that of getting the USA to adopt the metric system as
its primary standard of measurement. It is only an illustration of an
endemic cultural inertia and represents just one of the problems we face.
James Frysinger wrote:
You folks are squinting too hard.
Again, I think that this was never meant to be more than a rule of
thumb, a bit like "pi equals 22/7".
It's made a bit cuter by the fact that both a pint and a pound contain
16 ounces, albeit different kinds of ounces.
Jim
Jon Saxton wrote:
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
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