Bullet Grain

There are 7000 in a pound so that's 1/7000th of a pound.

It was originally the weight of one grain of barley due to their exceptionally uniform size. Barley is also where we get the inch from, 3 barley grains are 1" long- also due to their exceptionally uniform size.

Thingster: "Inch" is a corruption of the the Latin "uncia," which means one twelfth part. It's 1/12 of a foot.

the 3 grains of barley was used as measurement before it was known as an inch.

The foot came about later. It isn't really known if the foot was defined off of 36 grains of barley, or if what was known as the foot just happened to be 12x the length of 3 barley. This lead to it being called the "inch".

3 grains of barley to an inch? Thats some pretty darn big barley

And this is gun related because boolets are weighed in grains, and barley is a grain.

As much as I love this country our measuring system is confusing. With the metric system at least everything is in 10s or 100s. We use 4, 12, 36, etc.

3 grains of barley to an inch? Thats some pretty darn big barley

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Yes, lengthwise- it works.

And actually the English foot was originally what we'd call 13 inches, but there was already a 12 inch unit of measure in use at the time called a "pes" so the redundant units were tossed and the established one was retained, but renamed the foot.

The english system of measure has so much neat history behind it. it may be confusing and require memorization, but it's a lot more interetsing than the metric system (which has it's own goofy story as well)

before that happens.....
this barley grainweight thing also hold true for measuring powder behind those bullets?

The foot came about later. It isn't really known if the foot was defined off of 36 grains of barley, or if what was known as the foot just happened to be 12x the length of 3 barley. This lead to it being called the "inch".

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Actually, the inch, foot, and mile (Roman uncia, pes, and mille passus, if I got the spelling right) predate European medieval measurements by a millenium. The uncia was also the subdivision of the Roman mass measure libra (lb), but in that case is corrupted to "ounce" instead of "inch".

The US Customary System is a slightly rationalized form of the medieval corruption of the ancient Roman system of weights and measures. And at least in Roman times, they were standardized.

Yes- a grain is a unit of mass, so a grain of powder and a grain of lead are the same mass.

BTW, don't forget that just as with pounds, ounces, etc., there are two types of "grain" in the U.S. customary system, grains avoirdupois (1/7000 lb) and troy grains (1/5760 lb). Grains used to measure bullet mass are grains avoirdupois.

Roughly 15.432 grains avoirdupois make a gram, so a 55-grain .223 bullet masses about 3.6 grams, a 124-grain 9mm masses about 8.0 grams, and a 750-grain .50 BMG bullet masses about 48.6 grams.

But a grain is still a grain, it's the size of the avoirdupois pound and the troy pound that differ.

The avoirdupois pound was fixed at 7000 troy grains.

The foot and the great question

The Romans did not originate the foot, they got it from the ancient Egyptians. (The cubit not withstanding.) Now throw in a little of that barley and ...

THE GREAT QUESTION arises.

How many bottles of beer did it take to build the Great Pyramid?

Before you reach for paper and pencil bear in mind that construction workers are notorious beer drinkers, the ancient Egyptians were notorious beer drinkers and in this case we have both combined. (And BTW; they had a ten day week.)

Does an Administrator have more grains than a Moderator as far as the weight he wields?

Correct that a grain is a grain, but also true that the avoirdupois pound was defined as 7000 troy grains, but once it was defined as troy grains, "troy" could be dropped- just leaving the grain.

And yes, the troy pound (12 troy ounces) winds up being right around 14.5 avoirdupois ounces.

See, i still don't get why people push or the metric system. All of this stuff is just so self evident

I kid, but i still like US customary more than metric

How many bottles of beer did it take to build the Great Pyramid?

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none! beer was in earthen jars back then!

437 point something grains to the ounce.

As much as I love this country our measuring system is confusing. With the metric system at least everything is in 10s or 100s. We use 4, 12, 36, etc.

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Thing is, the whole 'factor of 10' itself is quite arbitrary, simply based on our number of didgets.

I find measurements very interesting, especially when oyu look at what they are based off of.

The genius of the metric system to me isn't that it is 'base 10' but the interesting items they based it off. (except it is actually more in tune with 10,000 than just 10.

1 KM = 10,000th of the distance from the pole to the equator. (i.e. pole to equator = 10,000KM, earth circumference = 40,000)

Now that you have that...divide it into 10,000, that is the centimeter.

1 centimeter squared = 1cc aka 1 mililiter. 1 gram = 1 mililiter of water, 1 calorie = the amount of energy to increase a ml of water by one degree C
C = 1/100th of the gradient between boiling water and frozen water.

So the metric system is really, at it's heart, 10,000, earth, and water.

The mile started out as 1000 paces, (a pace being two steps, = 5 feet)
The league which was 12 miles, was how far person could walk in an hour.

There wasn't really a strong link between miles and leagues. for long distance, 'hours to destination' was preferred. The only reason mile really stuck around was because a roman soldier could make any non-noble he came across carry his baggage 1000 paces to give himself a break. This is also what Jesus was litterally talking about when he talked about “Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain” aka 'go the extra mile'

To me, basing a unit of distance on the primary unit of travel and a common measure of time makes total sense, the fact that it is 12 X one mile vs 10x one mile is not really relevant.

I find land measures equally interesting. It all seems so utilitarian. The 'primary' or 'base' unit of land measure is the ROD. How long is a rod? Well, a rod is equal to a stick long enough that you can smack your oxen on the head when you are back holding the plow. It makes total sense that you would use said rod when oyu want to measure distances by laying rod end-over-end. (note, a canoe is a rod in length, so most portages are measured in rods, or basically how many 'canoes' long it is)

The other key to land measure is the furlong. This was how far an ox could pull the plow before needing a break. Again, this is a measure being defined by exactly what it is. Note, many cultures have a 'furlong' under different names. A furlong is 40 rods long.

Incidentally, the desire to mesh miles (1000 paces) with an even number of furlongs is why 1 mile = 5280 feet, because 1 mile actually = 8 furlongs.

The acre was how much land a single plowman and his ox could plough in a single day. Again, a measure being defined by exactly what it was. If you were a baron and you were given 50 acres, you new exactly how many oxen and serfs you'd need to work it. An acre was 4 rods wide by 40 rods long. There were additional measures of how much land a single oxen could plow in a season, how much an 8 team of oxen could plow in a week, and season. Apparently a team of 8 oxen were pretty commonly owned by the big landowner and dispatched to work different lands for a week at a time. Again, this is why people were so keen to shoehorn 8 furlongs into 1000 paces aka a mile.


Now, rods were also used for measuring lengths of rope (another common farm impliment) with a 4 rod rope being the equivlant of a 50 foot length of rope to us (although it was 66 feet long) and a rope was a lot handier to lay out your day's plowing than a long stick was. thing is ropes strech, change with moisture, etc. so when a famous british surveyor was doing a lot of early work for the crown, he used a 'chain' and that became a standard unit of measure. There was even some effort to move to 'link' as a subdivision of chain, but except for survey work link never caught on. Average peasant either measured stuff with his 4 rod long peice of rope, or the old 'heal-to-toe' pace off. (or as mentioned before, with barley grain)

and now we are back to grains. in addition to 1 grain being equal to 1 barley grain, the next step up, one scruple was equal to how much barley grain you had in a clenched fist, about 20, and up from there, one drachm aka dram, was how much grain you had in a single open hand scoop, about 60 grains of barley. The interesting part is this also ties into basic currency. Usually the basic currency at it's lowest level was equal to one 'hand scoop' of grain. This even varied by grain types. Some places build their structure on wheat, not barley ( 3 barely = 4 wheat) or other cereal grasses, or nuts, but the '1 basic unit of currency = 1 cuped single hand handful' holds true across almost all, as does measuring land by paces and animalwork. I don't know for sure, but I speculate that probably one cupped handful was a rough approximation of how much (or little) grain a person needed to survive, if it was mashed up, mixed with water, and cooked on a hot rock tortilla style, hence the rich people exchanged units of valuable metal in relation to how much food it was worth to keep one peasant working one more day.

Okay, I am rambling now, I just think when you look into it, it does really make sense, and it also really shows how every aspect of life revolved around work rather than play as it seems to be today.

1 KM = 10,000th of the distance from the pole to the equator. (i.e. pole to equator = 10,000KM, earth circumference = 40,000)

Now that you have that...divide it into 10,000, that is the centimeter.

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Well, that's only part of the story.

The french government originally hired two surveyors to measure the distance from the mediterranean to the english channel.

Whatever number they got they were going to extrapolate out to determine the distance from the equator to the north pole, and then divide by 10,000,000 and deem that their new basic unit of measure.

One guy did his job, the other guy blew his funding on hookers and booze and forged his numbers at the last minute.

So a meter is not a "meter" and is not based on nature, i's just as arbitrary as everything else.

Now it's defined as the distance light travels a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

The metric system was to be based on the drunken failing of a frenchman (God's honest truth).

But a grain is still a grain, it's the size of the avoirdupois pound and the troy pound that differ.

The avoirdupois pound was fixed at 7000 troy grains.

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Ah, my bad. I believe that you are correct.

So a meter is not a "meter" and is not based on nature, i's just as arbitrary as everything else.

Now it's defined as the distance light travels a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

The metric system was to be based on the drunken failing of a frenchman (God's honest truth).

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And the U.S. customary unit "foot" is now defined as a unit of length equal to exactly 0.3048 meter.

Thing is, the whole 'factor of 10' itself is quite arbitrary, simply based on our number of didgets.

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It's convenient since we use a base-10 number system, though---allows unit conversion via simply moving the decimal point.

"How many teaspoons are in 57.324 gallons?" is a lot harder question to answer than "How many milliliters are in 57.324 liters?"