What Are the Imperial Units for Weight?

This entry uses the imperial system of measurement. For the metric system, click here.

When you want do describe how heavy something is, you are talking about weight. What’s more difficult to lift: A fork or a TV? How many forks do you need before the weight of all the forks is greater than the weight of the TV?

If you have two things and wonder what weighs the most, you can bring them to the playground and lay them on each side of a 2-way seesaw. The side of the seesaw that falls to the ground has the object weighing the most on top of it.

Weight is measured in ton, pound and ounce, which are abbreviated to “short ton”, “lb” and “oz” respectively. A full quart of milk weighs about two pounds. That means that if the neighbors dog weighs 40 pounds, it will weigh as much as 20 full quarts of milk. You can verify this with the seesaw at the nearest kindergarten.

If you’re standing on top of a bathroom scale, it will tell you how many pounds you weigh. This weight can be used instead of the seesaw, so that you don’t have to walk all the way to the playground every time you want to weigh something.

Then, you learned that the bathroom scale you are standing on tells you how much you weigh in pounds. One pound is the same as 16 ounces (oz) or $\frac{1}{2000}$ ton (short ton). This also means that one ton is the same as 2000 pounds. There are other units for measuring weight that are less commonly used, such as stone and quarter. Here, we will only be using ton, pound and ounce.

1 Ton

(short ton) is 2000 pounds or $32000$ ounces.

1 Pound

(lb) is 16 ounces or $\frac{1}{2000}$ ton.

1 Ounce

(oz) is $\frac{1}{16}$ pound or $\frac{1}{32000}$ ton.

Ton is usually used to weigh something heavy. One ton is 2000 pounds. An adult hippopotamus weighs even more than that!