| |||||||||
| ★ wanayoo — archive 1999 http://howstuffworks.com/question329.htm | Nouvelle recherche | Portail wanayoo |
| |||||||||
Question of the Day
Question
When I buy "20 pound bond paper", what part of it weighs 20 pounds? A ream certainly doesn't weigh 20 pounds.
Answer
In America, the way we talk about paper is amazingly convoluted. The short answer to your question is that 500 sheets of bond paper with a size of 17" by 22" have a weight of 20 pounds. The manufacturer would cut a sheet that big into four letter-size sheets, so a 500-sheet ream of 20 pound bond paper weighs 5 pounds.
If you had said it was something other than bond paper, then the size of a standard sheet used to determine the weight might be different. See the second link below for details. For example, Bristol paper is heavier and stiffer (like the paper in a manila file folder). It's standard sheet size if 22.5" by 28.5".
In general, the more a sheet of a certain grade of paper weighs, the thicker it is. You can purchase 20 and 24 pound bond paper at an office supply store. 24 pound bond paper is thicker, heavier and more opaque than 20 pound bond.
The metric system has a much better way of measuring paper. First there is the sizing. A0 paper is a square meter of paper. One side is 84.1 centimeters long and the other is 118.9 centimeters (In other words, the longer side's length is the square root of 2 longer than the shorter side's length). A1 paper is half of an A0 sheet (preserving the square root of 2 rule). A2 is half of an A1 sheet, and so on. Paper weight is measured in grams per square meter, so it is very easy to figure out what is going on!
Here are three useful links:
Each weekday, Marshall Brain and the HSW Staff answer questions submitted by the readers of How Stuff Works
in the Question of the Day section of HSW. You can also view previously answered
questions in the HSW Question Archive. Here is today's
question!
Parents:
Get organized
for Back-to-School in 10 easy steps!
Teachers: Get the
Lesson Plans
you need, organized by curriculum areas!
Daily Stuff
Link of the Day
Gadget of the Day
Book of the Day
Cool Place of the Day
Survey of the Day
Article of the Day
News of the Day
Q&A Archive
Asking Questions
Sponsored Links
familyeducation.com
for the resources you need to help your kids succeed in school and in life.
Teachervision.com
- Get the resources and lesson plans you need, designed especially for teachers, by teachers!
 |
How Stuff Works (http://www.howstuffworks.com) is a production of Howstuffworks.com, Inc. 5625 Dillard Drive, Suite 217 - Cary, NC 27511 See http://www.howstuffworks.com/contact.htm for contact information |
Copyright © 1998-2000 Howstuffworks.com, Inc. All rights reserved.