Quoting a reader to ask: "I just read the first chapter, saying that it is the rice of the county school, there are 6 buckets in January, which is not enough for the father and son to eat, so that they have to exchange 9 buckets for the worst indica rice.6 buckets How many catties?" I know that 1 bucket is 10 liters, and I have also seen the "liters" of measuring rice, and friends who were born in the countryside when they are older should have seen it, and 1 liter of rice is about 2 catties. According to this conversion, 9 buckets of rice is estimated to be not far from 180 catties. Their father and son have such big bellies!! I've seen a life of food and clothing!"

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This time the monk was really right. Because the monk's hometown is also rural, and before writing this book, the monk consulted more than a dozen documents.

Let's start with two allusions. One is that the ancient bully landlords had the bad idea of 'big buckets in, small buckets out', that is, they exploited the loophole that the bulk of objects was not weighed in that era, but directly calculated by volume.

The other is Taiwan, until the seventies, to buy rice by weight, before buying rice is measured with a bucket, the measuring device is loaded with rice smoothing OK, even weighing is not used, in terms of convenience, it is quite convenient.

The problem is that in ancient times, when bulk transactions were conducted, they were originally measured by volume, and what we are talking about now is whether it is a kilogram or a pound, but it is a unit of weight.

The secondary school physics teacher told us that the two units obviously could not be easily converted.

In fact, ancient stones and buckets can be used as two units of measurement, one is a unit of volume and the other is a unit of weight. Obviously, the unit used for measuring meters is a unit of volume rather than a unit of weight, so there is no direct conversion between the Ming Yishi (volume) and the current unit of weight.

Now we have to figure out, how many catties is Ming Yishi equal to now?

The disgusting calculation process is avoided here, and the textbook is directly quoted...... Judging from the physical object, the Ming Dynasty Chenghua Bingzi Bronze Bucket (collected by the Chinese History Museum) has a capacity of 9635 ml, which is slightly smaller than the number we have been theoretically calculating.

Another misunderstanding is that the weight of a liter of rice is actually much lighter than a liter of water, so it cannot be simply converted into 2 catties, and the measured figures given by the "Research on Grain Yield per Mu in China's Past Dynasties" are that 1 liter of rice weighs 1.5 catties.

If we multiply the two numbers, it is not difficult to calculate that a stone of rice in the Ming Dynasty weighed about 153.5 catties. This number is far smaller than the data obtained by directly converting volume into weight, which is about 188 catties.

Then nine buckets of rice is probably equal to 138 catties now.

There is also a problem that has nothing to do with science, at that time, the official sent geese to pluck their feathers, and the store 'big bucket in and small bucket out', and the rice that could reach Shen He, an honest man, was greatly reduced. Then shave off the stones, rice husks, ohye, and there are still 120 catties left?

Can all this rice be eaten? Don't you buy some oil, salt, sauce and vinegar? You've got to use half of it to barter, and if you want something about it, I can't imagine if you'll be able to fill your stomach.

In fact, it is not my statement that it can only make people starve to death, but it is the unified statement in all the ancient books that mention it.