I’ve started to determine the right package of paper towels to purchase according to the cents per square meter value. You can discern the quality of a deal at the grocery by referring to the ‘cents per X’ market located on price tag next to the marked price.
I’m beginning to turn sour on the ‘2 Jumbo-Mega-Rolls are the equivalent of 8 Super rolls’ scheme that’s en vogue. Are there retractable roll holders to accommodate for all of this?
It doesn’t help that many of these packages are priced and then marked down in ways to entice the buyer toward purchasing them instead of more reasonably priced and proportioned ones.
It is complicated area. Not to even get to loo roll. Where I noticed that the ecological one I bought feels quality wise inferior to normal one. And this is premium type of stuff. So it sits between the premium and cheap, but more on premium end.
So really, how absorbant the paper is should be the gold standard, so let's ask manufacturers to put that on the packaging?
Although that doesn’t speak to the actual quality of the individual layers of paper. I’m not sure if weight is useful especially when manufacturers are already putting their thumb on the scale in other ways with the ‘2 Jumbo-Mega-Rolls are the equivalent of 8 Super rolls’ scheme that I initially referred to.
If all weight can tell me is that 2-Jumbo-Mega Rolls weigh the same as 8 Super rolls am I any better informed?
This is why I’m pretty content with using the price in cents per square foot as a baseline. In general it’s a useful metric when shopping elsewhere at the grocery store too.
I never understood the US paper size system while living there (or since...!), don't get me started with feet and inches and 16'ths etc - ISO, metric and base10 is just so much more logical and easy to use...
Since there's pretty much always some A4 paper lying around near you, probably a copy of the rules, in most situations we just hold up a sheet (rolled up if you're feeling fancy) next to the robot. Much quicker than finding the ruler that's probably in use (or misplaced) somewhere else :D
Or you can buy a ream of legal-size and have a printshop slice it down (which is how I got ahold of B4 or B5 IIRC).
Heck, I’m pretty sure you could get a sheaf of it at any number of office supply stores right now if you wanted.
Unless you have mobile paper shops. Could be handy, but seems a bit niche.
I buy A4 notebooks all the time. I use fountain pens, so many of the notebooks and even loose paper with the proper sizing (coating, that is) usually come in EU sizes. Tomoe River... Clairfontaine... etc.
You could have memorized the length of a cheapo Bic pen if that is common in your area; Or a Parker or a Monte-Blanc if you carry one of those.
All recent iPhones (regular models since `03) have a width of 71.5mm. Remember that, and as long as someone near you has an iPhone, you are good to go using it as a ruler. (And people will definitely be, um, impressed).
We have in my kitchen several brands of small forks, all are 19.2mm (just checked. The large forks have a range of sizes). Next time I need to measure something I could just request a fork...
As regards metric/A* paper sizes, it seems like just a coincidence that this scheme resulted in a standard size that is useful for everyday documents, since it only works for powers of 2 and starts with the definition of 1 square meter. If a meter were 1.5x smaller or larger, then I don’t think there would be a standard size that works so well.
EDIT: Being curious about this, I did some more reading, and discovered there is a “B” series of paper sizes that maintain the same ratio relationship, but are exactly in between all the A sizes! That’s useful.
Take the length/weight relationship.
Definitionally, it'd be way more elegant for the unit of mass to be based on the unit of length directly, a cubic meter of something, but having your base unit of mass be a ton wasn't going to fly.
So they instead tried for 1/100th of the meter and landed on the gram, but it turns out they misjudged and now your standard unit of weight is the prefixed kilogram instead, because everyone used kilograms instead.
Which is to say, if you didn't get a pretty good paper size out of the definition used for A0, someone would have found a different definition which did produce a pretty good paper size, and then declare it was the only natural one.