Fwd: cubic gallons

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

apparently, this went only to Wilson...

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
> Date: September 22, 2005 11:48:23 AM PDT
> To: Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: cubic gallons
>
> On Sep 22, 2005, at 11:19 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>> FWIW, back in the '70's, there was a company that sold liquid
>> hand-cleaner in containers whose content it referred to as "four
>> liters - one metric gallon." I thought that was pretty cool.
>> Unfortunately, Weights & Measures did not agree and the company
>> had to
>> simplify the statement of content to the far more prosaic "four
>> liters." My feeling is that, if there can be metric tons, why not
>> also
>> metric gallons? For the average Joe Blow working a job that requires
>> the use of a special hand-cleaner, "one metric gallon" probably makes
>> more sin... uh, sense than "four liters."
>
> i was about to post something similar.  "metric X", where X is a
> unit in some non-metric system of measurement, has a fairly easy-to-
> interpret meaning, namely 'measure close to and therefore analogous
> to X in the metric system'.
>
> i'm still baffled by "cubic gallon" and "cubic liter", however.
> maybe "cubic" is supposed to convey 'measure of volume', in which
> case the expressions are pleonastic  -- but sometimes people like
> to pile on extra reminders of meaning.
>
> the meanings analogous to "square acre" 'something that is both an
> acre (in area) and a square (in shape)' -- namely 'something that
> is both a gallon/liter (in volume) and a cube (in shape)' -- make
> sense, but, as jon lighter pointed out, they don't seem appropriate
> to the original context.  and anyway, they're better expressed by
> "gallon cube" and "liter cube".
>
> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>
>