I'm telling this story on two accounts: first, I'm not posting enough, and second, I wanted to share this story, but didn't really feel like it would even remotely fit anywhere else I currently post.
Okay, so I bought a ruler today and it was somewhat unclear if it was actually made of aluminum or not. So I set out to try to get a rough feeling for it. Estimating it at a millimeter thick, and 32 cm x 3 cm, I calculated it to be 9.6 cubic centimeters. Given its density of 2.7 g/cm^3, it should have been about 26 grams if it was made of aluminum. I don't really have an intuitive feeling for what 26 grams should feel like. So, I found out that modern pennies have a mass of 2.5 grams, meaning that if my ruler felt about as heavy as 10 modern pennies, this would be consistent with the idea that the ruler was actually aluminum. The best I could tell, the 10 pennies felt close to the ruler in terms of weight, so I have no reason to believe that the ruler is not aluminum.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
Pretty good math thinking there!
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"To truly live, one must first be born." ~ Evan [aX]
Paper Mario Social: The Safe Haven of GameFAQs. (Board 2000083)
It's funny that scales sensitive enough for mail and cooking ingredients aren't a standard household appliance.
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Real programmers can write Perl in any language.
Why would they be? Mailing a package, weight should only really be a concern with something that you WOULD be able to weigh yourself anyway (I've never had to mail a package though).
And cooking ingredients are measured by teaspoons and whatnot.
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython
The USPS's rates are per ounce, even for ordinary first-class letters. In the case of cooking, I think we often use volume instead of mass just because people don't have scales. Mass would probably be more accurate in general. Think about how when you fill a measuring cup with dry pasta, the line that the pasta reaches depends on the shape of the pasta and how well it's settled in the measuring cup.
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Real programmers can write Perl in any language.
USPS also has those fancy "We'll ship anything" boxes that make that end a bit easier.
As for cooking, it's easier and more time efficient to measure by volume, since you can actually see the amount that you require, instead of having to precisely measure everything and depend on a scale for your measurement.
Pasta also comes pre-weighed in boxes. You just pour in as much as you think you're gonna weigh. Pasta isn't really a dish you should require such a precise measurement such as weight anyway...
And if you seriously need to be using scales to cook food, you're probably already in a kitchen that has them anyway.
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython
It's really baking where weighing is more important that other forms of cooking, because the balance of the ingredients is more important. Chemical reactions and what not.
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"To truly live, one must first be born." ~ Evan [aX]
Paper Mario Social: The Safe Haven of GameFAQs. (Board 2000083)
Relevant: http://thesweethome.com/reviews/the-best-measuring-cups/
Oh measuring dry pasta is for fools. Fools I say.
I can see why you'd go in for weighing it though.
Anyway, re: aluminum ruler, have you tried putting it into a tub of water of known volume and seeing how much water it displaces? If you know the specific gravity of water and aluminum, you'll know for sure.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir