Chris Denzler

It's starting to look like "flat" is a really just a synonym for "box". - Chris

AlaMoi said: " you may have to travel many worlds before you find a binding definition." I have felt this for the last couple of weeks since I started researching this topic. It's certainly not a project that will even be very far off the ground by the due date, June 9th. I try to be very flexible as an instructor, even in the middle of the quarter. Students love extra credit opportunities, and I decided this assignment was important and cool enough to potentially raise their final grade a full letter grade for the quarter. Some students have the bit between their teeth and others don't feel it is worth their time. Those that are participating have bought in to my "unique contribution to the sum of freely available human knowledge" speech. Or they just want to get an "A", I'm not sure yet. In any case, I should be teaching Culinary Math again almost every quarter, and I am planning on offering my future students the same deal. A good bit of the course is about unit conversions, and research and work of this kind is (IMO) interdisciplinary, memorable, resume-worthy, and just right, proper, and good. Thanks again, - Chris

Wow, thank you all! We are just getting started, but you can watch this web page evolve at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Flat_%28measurement%29#Unit_of_volume_Measurement (If I got the link to post correctly! If not, you can go to my wikipedia user page User:cdenzler, and click on the link "/sandbox" and you will be redirected to the page) In fact, you can contribute to editing/building this page. My students and I just started last week by going to wikipedia.org, and typing WP:TWA into the search bar. This takes you on The Wikipedia Adventure, learning how to create and edit a page in Wikipedia. It takes about an hour to go through, and exposes you to (an initially overwhelming) bit of information on how to edit. I see that eGullet has some strict netiquette protocols. What is the proper way to share your messages with my students? Should I have them subscribe to the eGullet forums? I am assuming it would not be cool to copy and paste your responses to forward to them... - Chris

Hello, I am completely new to these forums and do not know yet which forum is most appropriate for what I am seeking. Since this is my first post I figured I should start at the New member forum! I sent the following question to Modernist Cuisine, since they are in the area that I live, and they pointed me here. This is the exact question that I submitted to Modernist Cuisine: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ My name is Chris Denzler and I teach Culinary math at Seattle Central College. This quarter my class discovered that Wikipedia had no definition for the unit of measurement the flat. I decided we should research this and write the Wikipedia page. We are currently seeking out solid references for this unit, as we have so far found two conflicting definitions (12 pints or 8 quarts), that are different from what the USDA quotes (they mention 12- 1/2 pint flats in one of their handbooks but never define it.). We suspect that 12 pints is what is used locally, and we have figured out that these are probably dry pints. Where do we go to find good references for our Wikipedia page, and do you happen to know the correct value? Thanks in advance! - Chris