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Comment by contravariant | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't that all still be the same ratio though? If you set the slide rule to convert 250 to 150, shouldn't it e.g. also convert 2 cups to 1.2 cups?

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Measuring cups aren't graduated in 10ths. They're split into 8 liquid ounces. 0.2 cups = 1.6 oz.

(My wife, who is from Finland, thinks the measuring system is insane. At least now I'm good at estimating conversion from F to C.)

Your wife is correct. Imperial measurements are absolutely ludicrous.

The US uses customary measures. The UK used Imperial.

TIL

+- 20 % error, insignificant for the accuracies used with either system.

Volume is just base 2 instead of base 10. It’s probably the most sane of the imperial measurements.

I assume you mean the cups that come in various containers of a particular size, because the ones I know come with a scale.

My liquid measuring cups are glass and have a customary scale graduated in liquid ounces, not 10ths of a cup. They also have metric measures on the other side.

Yep. And it would convert 2 tablespoons to 1.2 tablespoons too. There is no reason it wouldnt work for American recipes.

Most American measuring cups don't use decimals, unfortunately. You get things like ¼, ½, and ⅓ cup measures. Of course, still doable, just takes some extra mental work.

And if you can do that much mental work, you probably don't need the slide rule. I think a slide rule graduated with "cooking fractions" (i. e. the sizes of measuring cups and spoons that people actually have) would be a good idea.

https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/5y1r4h/kitchen...

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