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Glass Shapes Can Make Us Drink Too Much
Roland Piquepaille writes "Some people think that a glass is half empty while others see it as half full. But one thing is sure: some glasses are fuller than others. According to the British Medical Journal (BMJ), researchers from Cornell University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have shown that short glasses are more likely to lead to over-indulgence. In fact, people pour 20-30 percent more alcohol into short, wide glasses than into tall, narrow ones of the same volume. The researchers obtained similar results with students and professional bartenders. So, as New Year's Eve is coming, remember to use only tall glasses for your party!!!"
Seriously, some putz at the local pub insisted the Pint glasses there were only 14 fluid ounces. Having a few of same at home I whipped out my trusty graduated cylinder and measured the volume with great precision. The result was close to 16.5 fluid ounces. I keep waiting for an opportunity to make a $100 bet, but keep leaving the scienterrific equipment home.
Wall thickness of glass containers can certainly be deceptive. For pint glasses it's usually about 3mm for the sides and as much as 1cm for the base. Notice how tiny a 16.9 oz. (500mL) water plastic bottle looks compared to a 12 oz. (355mL) bottle. Shape may account for some, but wall thickness is actually a considerable amount of volume within outer perimeter.
In any event I'll be keeping it safe and sane this New Year's Eve by only drinking very expensive champagne. As soon as the money runs out I'll be on water, which should be about 1 hour and 3 hours before midnight.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Use short glasses when someone else is buying the liquor, tall when you are.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Shouldn't that be "use only short glasses"? It's New Year's Eve, after all.
> So, as New Year's Eve is coming, remember to use only tall glasses for your
> party!!!"
Don't you mean "remember to use only *short* glasses..." ?
Do you mean by "drink too much??"
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
I have found that after switching to this glass not only do I typically only fill it half full, I rarely even finish it all.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Silly me. I thought it was the alcoholism.
Most Americans are dehydrated most of the time. Few of us drink the 64 ounces of liquid we're supposed to. Can we use this effect to our advantage as well as our disadvantage?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
"So, as New Year's Eve is coming, remember to use only tall glasses for your party!!!"
I think you have that backwards, we want to use the short fat glasses.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
So, as New Year's Eve is coming, remember to use only tall glasses for your party!!!
Won't all of the real party animals be using the shorter glasses then? I tend to drink pretty lightly, but most of my friends...
Except it was the reason that geometry wasn't taught at an earlier age. Children were unable to grasp that a tall skinny container could hold the same volume as a short and wide container.
You'll never find the answer at the bottom.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
I wonder why marketing firms haven't realized this sooner, and utilized it to sell more.
I don't get it.
People who drink out of bottle shaped glasses tend to drink more than even those who use short glasses!
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
I, for one, am not surprised by this. It's hard to judge small volumes in a wide based container, especially by eye. It's nowhere near as hard on a tall thin container.
I wonder what would happen, though, if they took it to the extreme and had a very tall and thin container. My guess would be that you would again find over indulgence simply because the container dimentions are outside what people are used to.
Where can I sign up for the study?
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
The real trick to this is the "four pour". With a certain standardized spout that they attach to bottles in most bars, you start pouring, count to four, and you're pretty close to the 1.5 ounce mark. This is what's taught in most bartending schools, and if the bartenders stick with it instead of trying to eyball the amount, they get it right much more often.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Heh, given the lack of women here at Georiga Tech, it is no wonder that the only possible research is in analyzing alchohol and alchohol glasses.
The only other possible research alternative would have been to analyze network cable lengths, but then you get into cliched-joke territory.
Funny anecdote - a graduate student here asked a prof for a good hangout, and he recommended a place right across our research lab. Dude took his girlfriend there, only to realize that it's a strip club. Hilarity ensued. And of course, the same prof usually offered free beer and pizza if you came to his saturday meetings.
Now you know why they do research into alchohol glasses here at Tech.
After extenshive testing I haff determined that the shshshort glasshes are the besht for extenshive testing porpuses.
Now where the hell did I put my pants?
Faversham, Mr. Domo.
http://www.snopes.com/toxins/water.htm
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Although I don't think this is quite what the article is talking about, shorter glasses (think shot glasses) tend to be used for high alc. content drinks. OTOH, taller glasses tend to be used for beer, etc. Perhaps there's a relationship, too, between drinking too much and the type of booze, which could act as a lurking variable in the overall scheme of glasstype/drinking quantity correllation.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
more reason to teach it earlier, not less? I find that most things that are "unable to grasp" just haven't been demonstrated well. If you took a foot-tall one quart container and a three-inch tall one quart container, and just transferred contents, I think that would be a good demonstration they're the same volume.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I have found that after switching from 12-oz bottles (in which you cannot even find this BOFHiest of brews), to 22oz/750mL bottles (in which you can), to 3L bottles, even though I only typicallly fill glass your half full, I feel much better even if I rarely finish it all even.
We should all switch to plates for our beverages.
I only use tetrahedral glasses when I drink alcohol. Where are the research results on those, huh?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Just always fill it to the brim with alcohol.
I prefer to think that the glass is at half capacity.
So where do beer bongs fit into this study?
could it be that people put less into the glass because they worry about how stable the glass is going to be?
i notice that when i have to deal with one of those tall, thin glasses i worry about how stable it will be. but those shorter, fatter ones (whiskey style i guess) i dont care as the weight will be very close to the table anyways.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
it should read "Ass Shapes Can Make Us Drink Too Much"
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
i drink straight from the bottle/can. at least for new year's anyway. maybe they should make taller bottles?
You stole my joke!
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
glasses are so last week. Drinking Horns is where it's at! once you fill 'em, you can't put them down.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
What? We can drink? You mean to tell me the prohibition days are over? Curse that 18th amendment and get me some Jack!
I've got your nose!
Peek-a-boo! Where did I go?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Its not that I doubt these fine fellows from these modern establishments are establishing the facts with scientific rigour. Its that I doubt the barkeep requires such a defence of his actions.
Basically your daddy's money is being wasted on beer rather than proper research. And at your party you should provide a variety of glasses.
keep us from drinking anything at all.
The Four Basic Personality Types:
"The glass is half-full!"
"The glass is half-empty."
"Half-full, no, wait, half-empty, no... could you repeat the question?"
"Hey! I ordered a cheeseburger!"
(from memory, sue me if I screwed it up)
This is a sig. Deal with it.
One think is for damn sure, drinking makes some people want to drink more.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
As I ex-bartender/waiter (blah blah long time ago)...
It's all to do with the bubbles/throth/thewhitelayerthingymagig. How you pour the beer in determines how the liquid flows into the glass. The smoother the flow and less disturbance of the pour, the less bubbles (CO2) you are going to get formed. You can see this when you pour cola into a glass as well! IMHO is that short, wide glasses (if you pour it right),tend to make for this smooth flow of liquid, hence less bubbles. One is more more likely to distuble the pour of the liquid in a Tall, narrow glasses of the same volume - hence leading to more bubbles and less grog.
-- It's all in the Technique and bubbles.
I wonder, do drunken adults maintain their ability to 'conserve' when judging liquid volumes? That is, will they agree a quantity of beer poured from a small, short glass into a tall thin one is the same or will they simply drink it and move on to another study? One of say, their navels or the ceiling?
If "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and "it was beauty that killed the beast" then "please stop staring at me".
One is more more likely to distuble ...
disturb
- Sorry.
Slashdot is descovering what women have known for years: thickness is more important than length.
if they're the same volume, just fill 'em to the top, and it won't make any difference which you use, not that you'll be remembering much
Linux is to the internet as Duct Tape is to the Universe.
Who drank all the buy-products of these so-called experiments?
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius
One of my friends has taken to ordering Jack Daniels, chilled, in a martini glass. Most bars charge you for one shot but pour at least two--even bartenders who can pour a good 4-count will pour it, take a look, think it looks empty, and double it.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
Some people say the glass is half full, others say the glass is half empty, but engineers say that the glass has a factor of safety of 2.
and am I automatically dis-qualified because I'm Irish? =)
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
"The glass was half full, BEFORE it was half empty."
Short wide glasses are easier to wash than tall, narrow glasses. Tall, narrow glasses are also easier to knock over.
All I can se is that they are only half full. Wimps.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I don't remember where I heard this from; textbook, professor, teacher.
But a neat thing you can do is have two equal volumes of water in two different types of glasses and present it to a pre-preschool, preschool, or kindergarten aged child (memory is a little hazy on the age). Fill one short wide glass and one tall narrow glass with equal volumes of water in front of the child and the child will tell you that the taller, narrower glass has more water than the short, fat glass. Yes, they will tell you that it is fuller even though they see the same amount of water go into each glass.
I can't exactly recall which part of the brain develops during this age (24-40 months) at the moment, but it's a neat thing to see (if you're a science geek).
As how this might relate to the topic... maybe this doesn't fully develop (or develop as much) in some people because of diet, genetics, or a combination of both?
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
For you that like the mixers, you can still use a shot glass to get a consistent pour - just fill the shot glass with your liquor, dump the contents into your highball glass, and then top off with your mixer of choice. Shops that sell bar supplies generally will have a metal doohickey with a 1-1/2 oz metal cup on one side, and a 2oz cup on the other, with a long metal handle that is specifically for this sort of measurement. This will help you out immensely if you want to achieve consistent flavor/alcohol content in your mixed drinks.
Happy New Year, everyone!!
\/\/oobie
it was found that cold reality also makes people drink too much. Various groups continue to lobby for warmer reality.
Cheers,
D.
/dev/random
You can tell you've drunk too much, when you knock your glass over, and so can't drink any more!
So, you drink too much with the tall glasses faster than small ones, as you keep knocking the damn thing over after fewer drinks. And it's less stable, so you can easily drunkenly put it slightly off the edge of the table. Hence you drink less, and the person with the small glass appears to drink more, just cos they can still lift and replace their glass.
Simple, really.
In one respect, they're short and wide - the drinking portion - but on the other hand the stems can be quite tall, making the glass tall and slender overall.
Where do these glasses fall?
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
I don't know where these guys picked their test subjects, but if they were pouring by eye, they were flat out poorly trained. One of the reasons most bars have pourers on the bottles is so you can consistently pour by count. In most places I worked, we poured a shot and a half, which was a six count. AFAIK, the shape of a glass doesn't change the nature of time. (Although enough of its contents sure will...)
In fact, one of the tests we used to give people before they could go behind the bar was to pour 20 drinks into all different sizes and shapes of glasses, which we then measured. If you couldn't pour the right amount, or worse, poured inconsistently, you got more practice and training.
Be careful that request doesn't have you drinking out of the ash tray.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
This reminds me of an ice cream shop I went to once years ago when I was a child. I ordered a small ice cream sundae and my dad ordered a large. It was about a 2-3 dollar difference. When the dishes were empty, for some reason I filled my sundae dish with water to the top, then I poured it from my dish into my fathers large dish and it went right to the top. Both small and large held the same amount. It's just the large had really thick glass and the small had thinner glass, what a ripoff.
Anyway, "So, as New Year's Eve is coming, remember to use only tall glasses for your party!!!"... This year I'll be using short glasses thank you!
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They already made roofies illegal. What will I do if they make short, wide glasses illegal too?
The shareholder is always right.
i drink straight from the bottle/can.
Best I ever did was a Jug of Beer...No hands...just picked it up with teeth and Chugged it back...won a hundred bucks and almost puked.
when I've conducted my own tests... now where's those highball glasses and whisky tumblers... now where's that whiskey...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
http://www.kleinbottle.com/
There it could be a bit problematic to say weather its half full or empty, topologically
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
The ones with gaping cunts sure do!
Personally, I see the glass being twice as big as it should be.
I don't about bartenders and how they pour but any wine drinker can tell you that a wider glass will make a good drink more pleasurable because you can smell it better. Wouldn't be surprising if that led to more comsumption.
Even now a cabal of grossly underpaid lawyers -- Forced to live with only two houses and no private aircraft! -- are researching the class action litigation against the makers of short-wide shot glasses. These alco-terrorists will learn what it means to force Georgians to drink too much!!!
(Keep your bar receipts so you can qualify for one of the $1.07 settlement checks in about five years time.)
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Yep. Personally, I drink too fast, even with tea. With alcohol, in a bar, it's worse, because I get bored in bars and don't really get into the conversations others are having. Let's face it: bars aren't exactly the most stimulating environment for guys who like science and technology and sci-fi. OK, theres an oldish fantasy element to some bars, but that fades fast :) Basically, it's about self-control, and social periphery. If you don't want to get drunk, and you drink to fast, then try orange juice.
Some say the glass is half full,
Others say, half empty,
Engineers say, "that glass is not built to specs."
I spend xmas puking until 11pm.. fucking glass shape, thank god I don't have to blame my lack of willpower or inability to exercise self control.
The same concept is with Taco Bell cups. You get a Pepsi in this huge cup, and while no human should logically be able to drink this much drink, it goes pretty fast. You then realize that the entire cup is full of ice, and you actually only got 12 ounces of Pepsi.
researchers from Cornell University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have shown that short glasses are more likely to lead to over-indulgence.
What else would you expect from a University who's fight song is about a freshman who got kicked out for drinking too much.
"Give My Regards to Davy" (to the tune of "Give My Regards to Broadway")
Give my regards to Davy,
remember me to Tee Fee Crane,
tell all the pikers on the hill,
that I'll be back again,
tell them just how I busted,
while lappin up the high, high, ball
we'll all have drinks at Theodore Zink's,
when I get back next fall
Distributed proteome folding @ WorldCommunityGrid.org
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Its all nice to have accurate amounts of alcohol served to patrons. But legal driving or otherwise 'drunk' thresholds are percentage of blood levels. People differ much more than alcohol, with men going between 140 to 300 lbs in the bump part of the bell curve. Thats like twice the weight (and therefore the blood volume).
So 16 ounces might be less for the 400lbs person while 14 ounces might be more so for the 140lbs.
Its possible for bartenders to profile their customers before serving drinks, but theres another problem. Peoples alcohol tolerance and how fast their system clears it also vary enormously. (worlds fastest eater is a rather thin Japanese guy).
I guess it matters little how much a bartender pours if its not more than twice between the extremes, and if its not charged the same.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
if you are hosting a new years eve party (especially if it involves my friends) the cost of the extra booze doesn't even come close to the range it will cost to cover the damage. Not to mention can you realy put a price on seeing your friend passed out head first in a laundry basket?
I've seen people chug a frisbee, the ultimate short, wide glass. Apparently it holds about 3 - 4 beers. Dangerous.
So, as New Year's Eve is coming, remember to use only tall glasses for your party!!!
Obviously that should be short not tall. Who edits this stuff anyway?
Volume = H * pi * W^2 / 4
I think people often judge the size a container by its sideways cross-sectional area -- especially in this case where the cylinder has the same area from all sides (not counting top and bottom). The area is W * H.
Let's say you keep the volume constant and make the glass shorter. The decrease in H must be compensated by increase in W^2, not just W. The area W * H gets smaller due to this effect, even though volume stays constant.
Similarly, for different glasses with the same cross-sectional area, the wider cylinder will have bigger volume.
You probably get similar illusions in many different cases, due to the fact that human vision is really only 2D (two flat retinas) and we have to do some extra thinking to deduce what's going on in 3D.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I don't understand...why would you ever NOT fill up a glass all the way to the top? Maybe I'm just going to the wrong parties...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The pragmatist however, always finds out first what's in the glass before giving an answer!
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
Shouldn't the summary say that tall, skinny glasses may lead to under-indulgence? I think that's the real danger here.
So, as New Year's Eve is coming, remember to use only tall glasses for your party!!!
If you want to have a good party, you should probably do the opposite.
I have a easy solution, around here anyway if you're a 'designated driver' and you have some twirp barteneder insisting on getting you piss drunk, all you have to do is shout i am the designated driver at him/her, and I can't get toe up. If you repeat that montra, he/she is by law obligated then to at the expense of the bar to get you a cab if they screw up. Amusingly this also includes complsorory refills.
Cocktails are often served in short round glasses....
Well... what a revelation....
I guess these guys didn't do this survey in Berlin where cocktails are usually served by the litre in the tallest widest glasses available....
My own research has proven that the taller the beer holding apparatus, the more likely the over-indulgence. This is doubly true if the devil is following you around with a ginormous, multi-funneled, beer bong and keeps asking you, 'You gonna do it, man? You gonna do it? Don't be a sissy. You know you want to.'
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
I dunno; I'm willing to bet that he knows his wife better than you do.
I certainly hope I do!
--MarkusQ
Of course, most professional bartenders now use automated drink dispenser things.
They just click a button and the alcohol is poured exactly the same way every time, tall glass or no.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
"Some people think that a glass is half empty while others see it as half full." Some people think the glass is just too damn big.
Gigity Gigity, I'm useing petre dishes!
Insert Witty Remark Here ===>____________________________
And also remember, Budweiser (Budvar) started out as a european beer, way back when.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
First off, I think because of this study, we're going to see less 'short and wide' type glasses at bars - at least the greedy club type places. But anywho, I find myself amazed sometimes when I figure out which glasses hold more than others. The last time I was in New York, I was being a typical tourist and was having a nice beer outside watching some sort of food festival. It started to rain as soon as I got my second beer, which was in one of those nice tall, sort of large pint glasses. Looks like it held at least 16 oz. The bartender comes out with one of those short plastic cups, it looked smaller than those red and blue "Solo" cups I used so much for beer pong in college. Anywho, I poured the pint glass into the plastic cup, waiting for the cup to fill up, but it never overflowed. The darn thing held more than the tall pint glass. So that just shows that some people (at least me) can be deceived by glasses with larger bases. They just hold more than we realize I guess. Sorry... this kind of went on and on...
I drink my booze straight. I'd be a sucker not to take the large one that's cheaper/oz.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
In the search of faux reason to excuse ourselves from our stupid behaviour I'll testify that I watched crappy TV show yesterday, with violence and all.
It prompted me to perform 5 murders, 4 rapes, 3 stolen lollipops from babies and finally tied myselfs in bombs and fired the fuse in protest.
People, it's the TV!
I've been trying to think up ways of explaining why the object in your linked picture is _not_ a Klein Bottle for a while now. Now, you've brought up the reason yourself. Thank you very much:
What you have linked to is an immersion of the Klein Bottle in R^3, the three-dimensional vectorspace. (And before someone rants on the "the": All k-dimensional vectorspaces are isomorphic to each other.) An actual Klein Bottle is a three-dimensional submanifold of the four-dimensional vectorspace. And while an actual Klein Bottle does have no inside and outside, yours definitely has both: You can fill it with alcohol, can't you? Now, all you have to do is define "inside" as "the volume where the booze sits", and outside as "aw, no booze".
(And for the record: Yes, this definition is not quite analogous to the topological definition of inside and outside. But on using this definition, none of the usual drinking surfaces (i.e. cylinders with a bottom and deformations thereof) do have in- and outsides).
Hence, never forget: A Klein Bottle lives in four dimensions!
"Some people think that a glass is half empty while others see it as half full."
there is a third group of people - engineers - who see that the glass is 50% too big.
From the summary: "In fact, people pour 20-30 percent more alcohol into short, wide glasses than into tall, narrow ones of the same volume. The researchers obtained similar results with students and professional bartenders. So, as New Year's Eve is coming, remember to use only tall glasses for your party!!!"
And also remember to bring only short glasses when you go to a FRIENDS party
Dunno about you folks, but I drink when I see a bottle shape
You know how a lot of Americans feel about their guns? Well, we're like that with beer. Any politician who gets labelled as the guy who nicked our beer... well, his career is suddenly not worth a great deal.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
...It's too big.
My older brother played Ultimate Frisbee in college. His team would offer new members the choice of drinking a frisbee full of beer or (I think) 1 liter of beer. All would choose the frisbee which (if memory serves) actually holds about 2 liters.
(This is an official UPA-sized 175gram frisbee, not one of those cheap toys companies give away that don't fly farther than 10 feet before going tits-up.)
You insensitive clod!
--- Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
So, as New Year's Eve is coming, remember to use only tall glasses for your party!!!
;)
Surely you mean short glasses?
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
Nevertheless i consider this "fake" klein bottles cute.
:)
And just like the mandelbrot set (nobody is interested in the set itself, but everybody likes the arbitrary iteration cutoff colouring), it doesnt need to be correct to be cool
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
You know you have a drinking problem when it interferes with your Counter-Strike: Source addiction...
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
What makes you say the study is weak?
After reading both the journal article, and the writeup linked here, I don't see any obvious problems with it.
Pouring a single shot into short 350 ml tumblers and 350 ml highball glasses are both pretty common activities when making drinks. Seems like a prefectly legitimate thing to investigate.
I don't remember where I heard this from; textbook, professor, teacher. But a neat thing you can do is have two equal volumes of water in two different types of glasses...
I first heard of this in an Alan Kay talk. The experiment was first done by Jean Piaget.
Jerome Brunner (not important enough for Wikipedia, apparently) took the experiment one step further: after the child claimed that there was a different amount of water, he covered up the glass. Not being able to rely on his dominant visual mentality, the child is forced to use his "fledgling" symbolic mentality -- and he'd tell you that the glasses must have an equal amount of water.
Drinking Schlitz builds character, and helps remind you why you pay good money for good beer. Everyone should have to drink Schlitz* once in awhile.
* Falstaff, Olympia, Olde Style, and PBR are acceptable substitutes.
It's not all that bad, but really lacks in body -- it tasted like a light dark ale (if there can be such a thing) to me.
I think I'll go back to my I.P.A.s.
You could've hired me.