Understanding Engineers

sorry about that. It seems lately i've been getting very sloppy with my editing.

I'll try harder next time. I guess I should be proof reading my post! :)

Jamie

I originally tried to mean that 99.9% of the time I'm understood when I ask for half a cup of coffee. I don't get a 'huh?'. What I actually get is what you described.

To a hydrologist the glass would be at 50% capacity or about 150mL. To a chemist the glass is 75% silica. To someone from a hot climate, the glass has half evaporated. If you just sat down at a table, the glass is not yours.

Empty a full glass of water and then ask someone if 'the glass is at half.' Say it's a yes or no question. See what happens. Until it's tested, it is your opinion that the qualifiers 'empty' or 'full' are needed for the expression 'the glass is at half' to describe a glass found at the half way point.

I do think 'The glass is at half' is quirky language. But I claim it can still work.

A practical test might be telling a server: 'When my ~coffee is at half~ you can top it off.' When you complain you say 'Can you see that my coffee is at half?' The server can then say 'But sir I didn't top it off because your coffee is at 3/4.'

No. The Engineer says it has nice reserve capacity. It is the bean counter that says the glass is too large.

is

Kind of depends on where the radix point is.

?-)

I don't know. When I go to McDonalds, I ask for coffee with half regular and half decaf, and I can't tell which half is which. It all tastes the same.

-Bill

Yup !! We sure got us some ginger beers here in the group, looking at the comments. Also the odd pedant :-)

Rheilly P

Half what? Half the temperature it should be? Half the cream that should be in it? Half the strength it should be? Half the sweetener? Half of the cup is full/empty?

If your coffee is "at 3/4" (whatever that means) and you complain because it should be "at 1/2" (whatever that means), you have additional problems besides language befuddlement.

Ed

The spoken tendency is to use 'empty or full' when describing a cup containing something at 1/2 it's capacity. (As presumed by the optimist/pessimist test.) People tend to describe a cup at the 1/2 level as 'the cup is half full' or 'the cup is half empty.' A stripped down description could be, 'the cup is at half'.

Empirical method of determining when a cup is at 1/2 with any contents. Step 1: Look at cup. Step 2: Estimate volume inside cup. Step 3: Estimate 1/2 volume in cup. Step 4: When the volume of the contents from step 3 is present in the cup then the cup is at half. Meaning at half capacity or at the half way mark.

Or how about cooking examples.

For fun I'll put in full and empty qualifiers in a cooking example. Take a half empty cup of sugar combine with a half full cup of flour then add half an empty cup of nuts then add a half full cup of water. Sounds weird to me with the full and empty qualifiers.

How much gas you got? The tank is at half. (||The cup is at half.) Or one can say it's half empty or half full and reveal if they are a pessimist or optimist.