Off the top of your head, do you know how many teaspoons there are in a tablespoon?

3.

I always thought it was 2.5 tsp/tbsp and 2 tbsp to fl oz

I believe there are 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon. I can’t remember exactly how many teaspoons or tablespoons in a fluid oz.

3

depends on the size of the teaspoon and tablespoon. They come in all sorts of different sizes

Oh, as per how many T are in a fluid ounce, just a guess, 8.

@ragingloli I am guessing the q is referring to the standard baking measurement of teaspoon and tablespoon, as opposed to table utensils, which do vary greatly in size.

3 in a TBLS. No clue as to the rest. I use a measuring cup IF I measure.

6 tsp in a fluid oz.
I’ve been making stuff that requires precise measurements for awhile, I have bunches of weird factoids in my brain.

Without looking at answers, I know how many teaspoons in a tablespoon, and I know how many tablespoons in a ¼ cup, so in turn I can figure out how many tablespoons in an ounce, but I didn’t know how many in an ounce off of the top of my head.

Just tested it. 1 heaped teaspoon was about 6g. 1 heaped tablespoon was about 14g. So 1 tablespoon is about 2.333 teaspoons.

@ragingloli , Did you use a teaspoon an tablespoon measuring device, or did you just choose a teaspoon and a tablespoon?

I was surprised by the number of people who knew that there are 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon. My instinct is that there should be about 2. As far as two tablespoons per fluid ounce that always seemed to be too few.

I of course used a teaspoon and a tablespoon.

When you use the teaspoon and tablespoon, it’s not supposed to be heaping, it’s supposed to be flat (like if you put flour or sugar on the teaspoon and level it off).

that is why they are useless measurements

No they aren’t @raggy. They are created by specific sized molds, unlike soup spoons or other kinds.of spoons.

spoon is spoon.

There are no spoons, tea or table, on the top of my head.

Yes, I do know.

@ragingloli You’re not supposed to “heap” a measuring spoon, unless you’re using a recipe that tells you to do that, in which case it is telling you to use more than one spoon measure. And some silverware is made such that the spoons are also accurate measures.

Well @zaku that’s where the terms teaspoon and tablespoons originated from. They were regular spoons of roughly different sizes to be used as a guide, until,at some point they became official and standard sizes.

3 tsp/Tbsp
2 Tbsp=1 fluid oz.=1/8 c.

Americans who cook and especially who bake I would think would all know how many teaspoons in a tablespoon or would have looked it up once or twice. US butter sticks are marked with tablespoons and ¼ and ½ cup.

When halving recipes often times if you want to be very accurate you need to break down the smaller measure. Like if you need ⅓ cup liquid or dry ingredients in a recipe and you want to half it, then most measuring cups would not be exact, it would not be marked for 1/6, you would use tablespoons or teaspoons to be very accurate.

I’m making tapioca pudding and it calls for ⅓ cup of sugar. I was using tablespoons and so I put in six and then googled to see if I needed more. I was glad to find out that I was pretty accurate.

how big was your cup?

A cup is 8 ounces.

In the colonies we have these things called “measuring cups.” They have lines and numbers and letters on them @ragingloli. It’s all in code so the Redcoats can’t read them.
Curses! Foiled AGAIN!!

Use millilitres! You know what’s great? they are also interchangeable with grams for most liquids, and exactly for water.
1ml of water is 1g of water. How many ml in a l? 1000! How many g in kg? 1000! how many ml in a kg? 1000! throw your “cups” and your “teaspoons” in the trash, where they belong. Embrace metric superiority.

Metric is of course better, but our recipes are in cups and teaspoons.

I don’t necessarily think metric is better, it’s just different. We do fine with our way, nobody gets hurt, if one doesn’t know to convert when necessary, one shouldn’t handle stuff that is dangerous if not converted.

And although @ragingloli has been disparaging everything American since time began, this is not the stuff that matters to everyday life here. Hundreds of millions of us do just fine with it.

When I was in 2nd grade, so early 1970s, it was planned for the US to switch to the metric system, and so we spent many math classes learning about the conversions. Then it all went away a few years later.

We wouldn’t have to convert very often if we just lived in metric. Places like the UK actually uses a mix of both systems.

Dividing and multiplying by 8,16, and 12 is not easy! I need a calculator. Metric you can just move decimal places.

Recipes that use weight require a kitchen have a scale, so that could be annoying I guess.

Cups and teaspoons are just fine, measuring food is not really a big deal. Funny enough the original pound cake recipe from the 1700’s was by weight. A pound of flour a pound of butter a pound of sugar, eggs…

Many of the sciences typically use metric, even in the US.

Again, doesn’t mean it’s better simply because more people use it, it’s just different.

I think metric is far better.. it’s s based on 10, easy peasy to calculate, not a ridiculous random number like 12.
Shut up @ragingloli!

I learned at 8 years old, 3 teaspoon in a Tablespoon ! And it is abbreviated itsp and Tbls !

@Tropical_Willie on recipe cards, it’s simply “t” and “T.”

@canidmajor Again, multiplying and dividing by 10, 100, just moving a decimal. Also, easy to convert most liquid measure to weight as @ragingloli mentioned.

I’ll give you an example. I need something that fits in a 7 and ¾ foot space, but a lot of the furniture is listed in inches. Quick, how many inches is that? Not easy to do the math quickly unless you know your 12 tables really well and then add ¾ of a foot, that’s 9 inches, so ugh, 84+9, ok 93 inches. Also, I’ll point out that 7.75 feet is 7’9” which confuses a lot of people.

Or, let’s take something that is 3.2 meters and you want to know how many centimeters. Just move the decimal 2 places 320 centimeters. How many kilometers? .0032.

At the supermarket sometimes when comparing items sometimes the price is per ounce and sometimes per pound on comparable items so I can’t easily compare. This box of crackers $2.86 a pound but the other box of crackers is 17¢ per ounce. Which one is more expensive? You have to multiply by16. Can you easily do that in your head.

At the same time I don’t see a huge advantage with using metric for driving, MPH fits nicely.

(If you do need to convert feet to inches, you can also just multiply by feet 10 and by 2 and add, to get inches. Not that that isn’t multiple steps.)

@JLeslie Again, it’s just a matter of convenience. For what we use our measurements for, they are precise enough. For hard core scientific stuff, Americans do use metric. If conversion is annoying for you, it is inconvenient. Nothing more. If you are on the internet bitching about it, the internet can do the conversion for you.

Cups, tablespoons, inches, pounds etc are not arbitrary units of measurement, grams, liters, centimeters etc are not better, simply different.
I understand perfectly well the logic of a base ten system, I object to your casual “of course metric is better” assertion. It is neither better nor worse, it is simply different.

@canidmajor When you say conversion do you mean within a measurement system? I think of conversion to mean from one system to another, like converting inches to centimeters.

I think it’s pretty obvious I don’t have trouble with the math. It’s people who do have trouble with math who don’t understand why metric might be easier or more logical, because they often have an automatic rejection to any change and don’t understand moving decimals around.

If your argument is the system we use is sufficient, I agree for most things it is, especially for cooking.