After a tough winter, the weather started to warm up. When the weather gets warmer, our need for water increases as we sweat more. Unfortunately, the water we need to consume in order to survive is not very drinkable in our country’s taps. Instead of tap water, which we cannot use as drinking water due to the harmful substances in it, we use carboys that we tell our house.
Of course, there are those who have a water purification system installed on their taps, but we can say that most of them consume water with a carboy. Well, have you ever thought why the carboys you buy all the time are 19 liters instead of 20? Let’s take a look at the reason why demijohns are produced in volumes with a round number instead of using an integer.
Why are carboys 19 liters instead of 20?
There is a very simple reason why the volume of demijohns is 19 liters, which especially annoys people who have problems with round numbers. In fact, we can say that carboys are not even 19 liters. The volume of a carboy is 18,9270589 liters. This means that there is 1 tea glass less water than 19 liters in each carboy.
Let’s come to why carboys are not produced in 20 liters. This is because of the USA. The plastic injection machines that produce the carboys and most of the molds produced come from the USA. The US uses the gallon, not the liter, as a unit of measure. The liter equivalent of 1 gallon is 3.78541178 liters. Carboys are actually produced as 5 gallons and the liter equivalent is 18,9270589 liters. For this reason, 19-liter demijohns, which are equivalent to 5 gallons, are used in Europe and countries like us that use the liter unit of measurement.
Where does the name carboy come from?
When we get down to the etymological origin of the name Carboy, we come across different dates. It is thought that the carboy comes from the French name “dame jeanne”. This word, which started to appear in France in the 17th century, is thought to have evolved into different languages over time. The word, which is used as damigana in Italian and demijohn in English, is used as a carboy in our country. According to an alternative etymology, the carboy is thought to derive from the Iranian city of Damgan, but there is no evidence for this.
Today we explained to you why a carboy is 19 liters instead of 20. Do you want more of our content like this to come? Do not forget to share your thoughts with us in the comments section.
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