CHEERS TO ORWELL'S PINT

Beer Pint

To Orwell Today,

Hello Jackie Jura,

This is in regards to your article about the pints. See ORWELL LIKES A PINT

You seem to be confused over the two systems of measures used. I'm assuming you're from the USA based on the following:

"...What's additionally Orwellian about the article is that the Canadian government is mandating that "2 + 2 = 5" in saying that a pint is 20 ounces when in school we learned it's 16 ounces (a cup being 8 ounces and 2 cups make a pint and 4 cups make a quart or - in metric - a cup is 250 millilitres and therefore a pint is 500 millilitres and four cups make a litre)..."

You're used to US Customary units when in the rest of the world we use imperial and/or metric. Under imperial there is 16 oz to a pint. This is of course the measures we used in Canada before we switched over to metric in the 70's. A number of imperial measures are still defined in Canada under our Weights and Measures Act (which is why one would expect a 568 ml pint in Canada).

So indeed a proper metric pint, as you'd expect to get in the UK, Canada, Australia, etc. is ~568 ml, this is also of course bigger than half a litre (or the metric pint) which is 500 ml and found in many European countries (Sweden and Iceland I know first hand).

Here is a quick summary of imperial vs. US customary:

     1 US oz = ~29.57 ml
     1 Imp. oz = ~28.41 ml

     1 US pint = ~473.18 ml (16 us oz)
     1 Imp. pint = ~568.26 ml (20 imp oz)

     1 US quart = ~946.35 ml (32 us oz)
     1 Imp. quart = ~1,136.52 ml (40 imp oz)

Now here is where it gets interesting. When using your cups examples, you've mixed US Customary measure with Metric cups.

     Metric cup = 250 ml
     US cup = 236.5882 ml (8 US oz)
     Imp. cup (rarely used anymore) = 284 ml (10 imp oz)

So you are correct in that 2 metric cups = 1 metric pint (500 ml).

Otherwise, 2 US cups = 1 US pint (473 ml), or 2 imp. cups = 1 imp. pint (568 ml).

Hopefully this has cleared up the confusion a little. Again, remember, if it's an english-speaking country that is NOT the USA, they are most likely using Imperial measures NOT US Customary. This goes for Canada, Australia, the UK, and Ireland.

There is a ton of info on wikipedia of course -- if you want to delve into it further.

Cheers,
Kyle Sharpe

Greetings Kyle,

Geez, after that I NEED a pint -- and I don't care WHAT size it comes in.

Actually, I'm from Canada (not the USA) and ever since we switched to metric back in the 70s I never really know (without doing the math) what the temperature or weight of anything is -- whereas before -- when we had farenheit and pounds and ounces -- I could visualize (without thinking) how hot or cold it was outside or what a baby weighed at birth (for example).

But thanks for attempting to clear up my confusion -- and for explaining why it IS confusing.

Cheers,
Jackie Jura

To Orwell Today,

Hi Jackie,

...The whole measurement thing is utterly confusing and perhaps a good reason to embrace metric. haha. At least for fluid measures. I believe weights are the same in US Customary and Imperial.

Cheers,
Kyle

DAVE HOOK RANTS I'M CANADIAN

ORWELL AGAINST METRIC CONVERSION and ANIT-METRIC MARTYRS

VISITING ORWELL'S LOCAL PUB and VISITING ORWELL'S LONDON PUBS

23.The Proles

Jackie Jura
~ an independent researcher monitoring local, national and international events ~

email: orwelltoday@gmail.com
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