WAYS TO MEASURE A BUTT


On a previous show you were discussing ways to measure a butt. I recall some ideas like the number of notes on a piano. At Los Alamos National Laboratory, we generally use metric units, but every once and awhile, we need to be quantitative about 'a butt load of stuff', 'a butt load of rocket fuel', 'a butt load of anti-matter', etc.

I thought that you might like to know that there is actually an exact unit of volume called the BUTT. I kid you not!!!

See Websters dictionary: butt - a measure of liquid capacity equal to 126 gallons or two hogs heads

In another dictionary: An English butt is 2 hogshead of 54 imperial gallons each or ~129.7 US gallons (i.e., a UK butt is apparently slightly bigger than a US one). A Spanish butt is based on a wine cask and is equivalent to 140 US gallons or ~116.6 UK gallons (i.e., a Spanish butt is bigger still)

So next time someone says they have a 'butt load' of stuff, just remember, that is about 2.55 gallon barrels worth of stuff.

1 butt equals:

2 hogsheads (this is probably the easiest to remember for social occasions)
476.961 liters
126 gallons
104.917 UK gallons
13.5347 bushels
0.131592 cords
11.6574 firkins
4032 gills
21504 ponys
4032 noggins
1008 pints
96768 teaspoons
12.0308 ephahs
1.58987x10^7 drops
10752 jiggers
16128 shots
629.504 wine bottles
630 fifths
one microbutt = 0.0968 teaspoons

Cheers,
Carl Gable (and the rest of the geeks and geekettes in the carpool, Dr. Bill Carey, Dr. Barb Dutrow, Dr. Jeremy Mitchell, Dr. George Guthrie)