Why are liquids like water measured in ounces, liters, gallons, etc oppose to weight like lbs, kilos, grams, etc. ?
In: Chemistry
They can be measured by weight, but we typically want to know how much space they take up. You have a 1 gallon container and you want it filled.
You order a 12 fl oz drink and you expect a size not something that differs because sweet tea is heavier than duet Sprite
Quick Google,
The liter (also spelled litre) is a unit of volume in the metric system of units. One liter is equal to 1,000 cm3. A liter of water has a mass of exactly 1 kilogram
Liquids are measured as a volume. 1 liter = 1 dm3. It’s not weight.
Weight is a mesure of the mass quantity (indirectly cause we measure in fact the force of the earth attraction). Lbs, kilogrammes etc are mass quantities.
It’s very easy to measure flow rate throw a pipe to find out how much volume flowed through it. Determining the mass would be much harder.
Compare that to solids, it’s very easy to weigh them, but hard to determine their volume because they don’t fill a space without gaps.
And since liquids have constant density (at assumed constant temperature), volume and mass are linked anyway
Liquids are measured by the volume as their weight depends on the density of the liquid in question which make it hard to measure.
It is trivial to measure the volume of a liquid in the context of a sale, as you can use calibrated containers.
If you put water or oil in such a container, the volume is the same, the weight will not.
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