WEBVTT - How much does 20-pound bond paper weigh?

0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:03.840
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com, where

0:00:03.840 --> 0:00:15.680
<v Speaker 1>smart happens Him Marshall Brain with today's question, how much

0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:20.279
<v Speaker 1>does twenty pound bond paper way? When you go to

0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:23.680
<v Speaker 1>the store and buy a printer paper, it's normally described

0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:28.319
<v Speaker 1>as twenty pound bond paper, But what does that actually mean?

0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:31.640
<v Speaker 1>The way we talk about paper in the United States

0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:36.360
<v Speaker 1>is amazingly convoluted. The short answer is that five hundred

0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:40.519
<v Speaker 1>sheets of bond paper with the size of seventeen inches

0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:44.600
<v Speaker 1>by twenty two inches have a weight of twenty pounds.

0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:48.320
<v Speaker 1>The manufacturer would cut a sheet that big into four

0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:51.720
<v Speaker 1>letter sized sheets, so a five hundred sheet ream of

0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:56.200
<v Speaker 1>twenty pound bond paper actually weighs five pounds. Each sheet

0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:59.920
<v Speaker 1>of paper therefore weighs one one of a pound, or

0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:03.280
<v Speaker 1>about four and a half grams. If it was something

0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:06.399
<v Speaker 1>other than bond paper, then the size of the standard

0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:10.280
<v Speaker 1>sheet used to determine the weight might be different. For example,

0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:14.280
<v Speaker 1>bristol paper is heavier and stiffer, kind of like the

0:01:14.319 --> 0:01:18.039
<v Speaker 1>paper and a Manila file folder. It's standard sheet size

0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:20.600
<v Speaker 1>is twenty two and a half inches by twenty eight

0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:23.759
<v Speaker 1>and a half inches. In general, the more a sheet

0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:26.840
<v Speaker 1>of a certain grade of paper ways the thicker it is.

0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:30.639
<v Speaker 1>You can purchase twenty pound or twenty four pound bond

0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:33.959
<v Speaker 1>paper at the office supply store. The twenty four pound

0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:37.960
<v Speaker 1>bond paper is thicker, heavier, and more opaque than twenty

0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:41.440
<v Speaker 1>pound bond. The metrics system has a much better way

0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:45.920
<v Speaker 1>of measuring paper. A zero paper is a square meter

0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:50.160
<v Speaker 1>of paper. One side is eighty four point one centimeters long,

0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:53.360
<v Speaker 1>and the other is a hundred eighteen point nine centimeters.

0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:57.120
<v Speaker 1>The longer sides length is the square root of two

0:01:57.120 --> 0:02:01.240
<v Speaker 1>longer than the short sides length. A one paper is

0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:05.040
<v Speaker 1>half of an A zero sheet, preserving the square root

0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:08.480
<v Speaker 1>of two rule. A two paper is half of an

0:02:08.520 --> 0:02:12.200
<v Speaker 1>a one sheet, and so on, and paperweight is measured

0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:15.400
<v Speaker 1>in grams per square meters, so it's very easy to

0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:19.040
<v Speaker 1>figure things out. For more on this and thousands of

0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:25.360
<v Speaker 1>other topics, is it how stuff Works dot com