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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!!!"
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
http://www.snopes.com/toxins/water.htm
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
In the UK all pint glasses (and other sized glasses) that alcohol is served in are engraved with the size and an official coat of arms - it's illegal to use any non-standard glasses.
We spent a few days talking about this in my cognitive psych class last semester. It's called conservation, and Piaget did quite a few experiments very similar to what you described when he was working out his stages of development. The preoperational(~3-7 years old) stage is when children have difficulty realizing that the volume of liquid is actually the same. Concrete operational(~7-11 years old) is when children start developing the skills for thinking logically about stuff(such as the conservation of liquid), and can realize that the volume of liquid is indeed the same. It's really a bit odd at first to see a group of children at one age say that one glass has more water than the other, and another group of children a year or two older realize they have the same amount.
Damn. I never thought I would use anything from that class.
In Canada, there's a unit under Industry Canada called Measurement Canada.
s f/en/Home
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/inmc-mc.n
If they say it's a pint, it has to be a pint. You can report a bar to this group and they will investigate, and cite if necessary (not listed on their site but was stated by a representative of theirs on a CBC Radio One show, I believe Quirks and Quarks).