BS: Drastic measures

Subject: BS: Drastic measures
From: Auxiris
Date: 01 Dec 02 - 12:10 PM

Everyone (hopefully) knows about the imperial gallon and the American gallon, but have any of you ever heard of the metric gallon? Apparently, solvents were sold in chemical catalogues using this strange measurement in the early eighties in Canada. So, just exactly what quantity of liquid is in a metric gallon? Anyone??

cheers,

Aux

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Dec 02 - 12:45 PM

I've tried searching Google and found 2 or 3 references to a 4 litre "metric gallon" which apparently is roughly 5% larger than a US gallon but smaller than a UK gallon which I think is 4.5454... litres. Perhaps that one that was used in Canada?

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From: Cluin
Date: 01 Dec 02 - 01:22 PM

I don't remember any metric gallons.

Always been litres--the volume of a cube 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm. (or millilitres for smaller quantities in cooking and injections)

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 01 Dec 02 - 01:59 PM

Well in Greece I used to order a Kilo of wine. Which when you think about it sort of makes sense. 25 litres of water weighs about 25 kgs. Doesn't work for higher density liquids, but it's useful as a rough guide.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 01 Dec 02 - 05:33 PM

Oh please, I've only just sussed out what a proper gallon is in pints.

Why do they have to keep messing with systems...?

Soon there will be individuality in any country and the whole world will look like Mid West American Generica.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Dec 02 - 07:54 PM

? Liz ?

I thought the difference between the US and Imperial gallon had nothing to do with the number of pints per gallon but to do with the size of the pint, I think a 16 and 20 fl oz pint respectively.

I'd have thought the metric system would have made us all more French than Mid West American.

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From: Bert
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 12:42 AM

Liz, they messed with the system because Napoleon went mad.

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 12:56 AM

gallon a common unit of capacity in Enlish speaking countries, equal to four quarts, the U.S. standard gallon being equal to 231 cubic inches (3.7853 liters) and the British imperial gallon to 277.42 cubic inches (4.546 liters) named after Gailic galia vessel, bowl.

Random House Dictionary

A practical 4 litre Metric Gallon will replace the present 5% smaller 4 quart gallon for gasoline, milk, paint, etc.

http://home.earthlink.net/~metricusa/sciencesum.html

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 03:09 AM

I thought the difference between the US and Imperial gallon had nothing to do with the number of pints per gallon but to do with the size of the pint, I think a 16 and 20 fl oz pint respectively.

Ergo, a US gallon has a discrepancy in the number of pints in it... 2 in fact....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From: GUEST,Astorsen
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 03:43 AM

All this reminds me of a time when, as an engineer, I had to fight with incoherent units like micrograms per gallons instead of grains per gallons, odd units like acrefoot per day instead of inches and fractions of inches (halves, all tha way to 16ths) per day for rainfall, etc.

It may be infortunate that the international (and consistent) system is the metric system that was put together by french revolutionnary (end of 18th century) scientists.

By the way, what are the local current unit system in Australia? US, imperial or Australian gallon,


Salut,

JL

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From: GUEST,ozmacca
Date: 03 Dec 02 - 02:25 AM

Down in Oz, they went standard euro-metric yonks back. Now absolutely everything is in litres or millilitres, tonnes, kilogrammes, grammes or milligrammes, kilometres, metres, centimetres or millimeters, and hectares........ Unless you're over fifty or a recent immigrant from the UK, many of whom seem to still think in gallons (inperial), pints, fluid ounces, tons, hundredweight, stones, pounds, ounces (troy and avoirdupois), miles, furlongs, yards, feet, inches, and acres.

I have memories of changing from the foot-pound-second system to the centimetre-gram-second system back in the sixties, with interesting detours into the area of poundel and slugs. Shudder.......

The think I can't get to grips with is measuring fuel economy. Miles per gallon was OK, so kilometres per litre seems logical, but the thing these days seems to be litres per 100 kilometres.

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From:
Date: 03 Dec 02 - 02:30 AM

For test

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 04 Dec 02 - 12:23 AM

I was in charge of a lab in Canada up to 1985. We bought most of our acids and many other liquid chemicals in Winchesters.
A Winchester is a glass jug with a ring handle on the neck (thus a few empties were hept as handy liquid containers) which contains (or contained, perhaps changed now) 6 pounds or 2.7 kg of the liquid, which in our case mostly was concentrated nitric acid or conc. acetic or sulfuric acids. All of our chemicals were purchased from American suppliers so pounds were standard. The technicians used metric in chemical procedures since all of out volumetric glass was metric, in milliliters to liters, etc.
Winchester comes from England, the standards for dry and liquid measure were kept there, hence Winchester quart, etc. The name came to be used in the states as well, applied to a type of container.
Hydrofluoric acid was bought in smaller plastic bottles of about pint size because we felt the acid was too dangerous for our technicians to handle in larger containers. I can't remember the exact size now, but they were by weight rather than volume as well.
Towards the end, 1980s, reliable chemical companies were producing the analytical grade chemicals we needed in Canada.
I have no idea what a metric gallon is, but Guest may be right.

My wife, looking over my shoulder, just told me that one liter (litre) equals 4.33 cups. I presume that she is talking about American cups since she is American originally. I'm going to quit before I become confused.

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From: GUEST,T-boy
Date: 04 Dec 02 - 08:11 AM

Much as I'm used to it, I have to say that miles-per-gallon is not very logical as a measure of fuel consumption, as the figure goes up when consumption goes down and vice versa. A fuel-per-distance expression is much better in this respect than a distance-per-fuel one.

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From: Rapparee
Date: 04 Dec 02 - 08:20 AM

Have you folks forgotten ells, ems, ens, li, cran, hands, drams, pinches, and cc's? Not to mention the size measures used for (black) gunpowder: 1X, 2X, 3X, 4X? (These always sound like porn flick ratings, except for the last which sounds like a brand of condom. They give a whole new meaning to "shooting off your gun".)

Why, if we use the foot as a measure, we use inches instead of toes?

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From: mooman
Date: 04 Dec 02 - 08:41 AM

For those who are interested a

Brief history of the metric system

(from the University of North Carolina by a perverse twist!)

I believe that, although the metric system was formally devised by scientist in revolutionary France in the 1790s, it was first proposed some 300 years earlier although I can't find my reference to that at the moment.

Cheers!

moo (brought up in Imperial but who can only use metric now!)

Subject: RE: BS: Drastic measures
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Dec 02 - 09:01 AM

"Ergo, a US gallon has a discrepancy in the number of pints in it... 2 in fact...."

I'm not sure I'm right with my fluid ounces but as far as I know both gallons contain 8 pints. Using that and your logic, we get:

Imperial gallon = 8 x 20 = 160 fl. oz.
US gallon = 8 x 16 = 128 fl. oz.

Difference = 32 fl.oz.

We would then need to decide which pints we are using. If the above is correct, it would be fair to say that the US gallon is 2 US pints smaller than an imperial gallon. If we were talking imperial pints, the difference would be 1.6 pints.