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Comment by regularfry

6 days ago

Very minor point, in the grand scheme of things: when converting measurements from imperial to metric, I would be astonished if many recipes need more than two significant figures. When the recipe says "391.32 gram strained greek yogurt" I would not expect disaster to befall me if I only supplied 391.31g.

A more major point is that I don't seem to be able to select text to copy and paste. I had to type out "391.32 gram strained greek yogurt" like some sort of caveman. And that makes me wonder what a screen reader would make of it...

45 comments

regularfry

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ibejoeb  6 days ago

For recipes, I prefer to use approximate round figures when talking in terms of metric and American customary. So, 1 fl oz is 30 ml, a pound of flour is 450 g, etc.

These are much easier to measure, scale, and remember. There are very few contexts where minute differences matter, and I don't think you're going to find a material crossover figure between those that want recipe help and those that are working on the kind of stuff where it matters.

netsharc  5 days ago

An Apple press release about how much gold they could recover from recycled iPhones pissed me off so much. And all the "journalists" just copied and pasted the number with too many significant digits...

It said "Apple recovered 2204lbs of gold" from recycled iPhones. Guess who just did a plain conversion from a tonne (1000kg) to lbs.

The whole environmental report from Apple had more numbers, and you could clearly see that they were all converted from metric to imperial and made to look really precise...

"We recovered two thousand and four pounds of gold!" sounds a lot more precisely calculated than "we recovered about 1000kg of gold" ("Not 2203lbs, not 2205lbs, but 2204lbs!"). And no journalist caught this...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/apple-ton-of-gold-recycling_n... including a link to the full report. Appropriately from a website cosplaying as journalism

atonse  6 days ago

This reminds me of making a trip to a jeweler when I was < 10 years old, and noticing that they had a weighing scale that seemed to be down to decimal points of a gram (which I guess counts when you're weighing gold, etc).

And the numbers kept changing even when the scale was empty. I think I had a whole conversation with my grandpa about why that was happening, and we came up with "probably just variations in air/breeze around the scale causing them to change"

No idea if that's actually what it was, but it's plausible if you're doing sub-gram weighing?

  • embedding-shape  6 days ago

    > No idea if that's actually what it was, but it's plausible if you're doing sub-gram weighing?

    Yes, even dust particles landing on the scale can impact the reading, which is why when you're measuring really small things and want to be precise, you usually have a little glass/plastic cube around the entire thing too.

    Also frequently used for people who measure drugs for various purposes.

  • Scene_Cast2  6 days ago

    Most likely the op amp (or whatever gain stage) noise. After a certain point, you get thermal noise.

    But with such scales, low sample rates and averaging are key.

  • umanwizard  6 days ago

    I have a scale in my kitchen that measures with 0.1g precision, and it doesn't do what you describe (change while you're not touching it). Perhaps technology has advanced since the anecdote you describe? Or maybe my scale is just lying to me.

    • ceejayoz  6 days ago

      Your scale may smooth out the fluctuations automatically.

      Mine takes a little while to notice when I'm adding something like a tenth of a gram of yeast to a recipe.

      1 reply →

    • atonse  6 days ago

      Hmmm then I bet it was a flaw. Or maybe modern scales have microcontrollers that adjust for this?

      This was a scale in a jeweler in India. It might have been in the late 80s or mid-90s. I might be misremembering too. So take my anecdote with a grain of salt.

      2 replies →

AwkwardPanda  6 days ago

Thank you for the feedback. Will definitely release an update by tomorrow for this.

Regarding selection of text, that has been a problem with flutter. I will find a way to make it selectable.

There is an alternative. You can share the recipe or click print. There you would be able to select it.

Or, you could share the recipe and it would be copied to your clipboard.

I know that is not exactly what you want, but it will solve the purpose for now.

I'll fix it soon. Apologies.

  • pjsg  6 days ago

    I'm not convinced that the units conversion is right. The example of 2 Cups of greek yoghurt being 391.32 g. 1 US cup is 240 ml (or 236.5 ml depending on which type of cup you are using). The density of greek yoghurt is somewhere between 0.96 g/ml and 1.04 g/ml (depending on which website you trust the most). This leads me to calculate that 2 cups greek yoghurt weighs between 454 g and 499 g). The 391 g value is way off.

folli  6 days ago

Also, depending on the ingredient, it makes more sense to use cups as a measurement of volume, not mass, when converting to metric. E.g. liquids, yoghurt etc.

Another thing: although not strictly metric, but European recipes also use tablespoon and teaspoon as measurements for smaller volumes, so no need to convert this.

Just my two cents, other than that very nice work!!

  • djoldman  6 days ago

    Please, please try using weight whenever possible, aka for all amounts >= 2 grams.

    1. People are bad at measuring volume. This has been tested. There is much more variance in amounts measured by volume than be weight. See "science and cooking" (ferran adria).

    2. Using a scale means doing a lot fewer dishes! (measuring cups, spoons, etc.)

    3. It's faster, try it!

  • ThomasMidgley  6 days ago

    "Also, depending on the ingredient, it makes more sense to use cups as a measurement of volume, not mass, when converting to metric."

    Hmmm... What kind of cup? :-)

    US "legal" cup (240ml)

    US customary cup (246,6ml)

    metric cup (250ml)

    UK cup (170,5ml)

    edit: fixed typo 150ml -> 250ml