Conversion from 2 US Liquid pints to Cubic feet

Information about the US Liquid pint (pt)

The United States liquid pint is a unit of volume equal to exactly 473.176473 millilitres. Its symbol is pt. It is sixteen United States fluid ounces and an eighth of a United States gallon. It is noticeably smaller than the imperial pint of 568 millilitres, because the American pint holds sixteen fluid ounces where the British one holds twenty.

That difference of four ounces is the whole story of the two pints. Both systems descend from the same medieval English measures, but Britain rebuilt its liquid chain in 1824 around a gallon of ten pounds of water, while the United States kept the older wine gallon of 231 cubic inches. The pint inherited the difference, and a British pint is now about a fifth larger than an American one.

The rhyme survives because the American pint fits it. A pint's a pound the world around works for the United States pint, since sixteen fluid ounces of water weigh 1.04 pounds, and it fails in Britain, where a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter. The saying is a useful reminder that measurement rhymes travel worse than the measurements themselves.

Draught beer is where the difference becomes visible to travellers, and where American practice is looser than British. There is no federal requirement that a glass sold as a pint contain a pint, and the widely used sixteen-ounce shaker glass holds that volume only when filled to the brim, so a poured beer with a head contains less. Several states have legislated on the point precisely because the imperial system's verified glass has no American equivalent.

Domestic packaging uses it constantly. Milk, cream, ice cream and soft fruit are sold in pint containers, and a donated unit of blood is loosely called a pint although it is about 470 millilitres. Premium ice cream in a pint tub is one of the most recognisable retail formats in the country.

A separate United States dry pint of 551 millilitres exists for produce, and nothing in the word distinguishes it. A pint of cream and a pint of blueberries are therefore different quantities, differing by about sixteen per cent, which is the sort of detail that only becomes visible when someone tries to convert a recipe.

One United States liquid pint equals 473.176 millilitres, 16 US fluid ounces, 0.125 US gallons, or about 0.833 imperial pints.

Information about the Cubic foot (ft³)

The cubic foot is a unit of volume equal to 1728 cubic inches, or 28.3168 litres. Its symbol is cu ft, sometimes written ft³. It is the volume of a cube one foot on each side, and it is the unit in which the United States measures natural gas, appliance capacity and air flow, three fields with almost nothing else in common.

Natural gas is its largest use by far. American gas meters record consumption in hundreds of cubic feet, bills are issued in thousands, and national reserves are quoted in trillions. Because the energy in a given volume of gas depends on its composition, utilities also publish a heating value per cubic foot, and the bill is the product of the two.

Appliances are sized in it. Refrigerator and freezer capacity in the United States is quoted in cubic feet, so a family refrigerator is about twenty and a chest freezer perhaps seven, and the same convention covers microwave ovens, washing machines and truck cargo boxes. Shoppers compare products by a number that describes usable space rather than external dimensions, which is genuinely more useful.

Air movement uses it per unit time. Fans, extractors, air conditioners and compressors are rated in cubic feet per minute, a figure abbreviated to CFM in every American catalogue. Ventilation standards are written as required air changes, which convert to cubic feet per minute once the room volume is known, so the unit sits on both sides of the calculation.

Materials and freight follow the same scale. Concrete, gravel, mulch and topsoil are sold by the cubic foot in smaller quantities and by the cubic yard in larger ones, twenty-seven cubic feet making one cubic yard. A cubic foot of fresh water weighs 62.4 pounds and holds about 7.48 United States gallons, which are the two figures most often needed alongside it.

Its metric equivalent is not memorable, at 28.3168 litres or 0.0283 cubic metres, and neither is its relationship to the cubic inch, at 1728. Those factors are why engineering outside the United States moved to metric volumes early even where lengths stayed imperial for longer.

One cubic foot equals 1728 cubic inches, about 28.317 litres, about 7.48 US gallons, or about 0.0283 cubic metres.