Dry Measure Dry measure refers to the measurements for dry goods, such as grain, fruits and vegetables, rice, etc. This is a good section to begin working with reduction because it is something that may be less familiar to you than money. In this lesson, we will work on reducing, or converting, pints, quarts, pecks, and bushels. All of these are units of dry measure that have different values. The smallest unit is the pint. If you want to compare this to money, think of this as being similar to the cent. The next biggest unit is the quart. 2 pints make up one quart. Next is a peck. 8 quarts make up one peck. The biggest unit we will work with today is a bushel. 4 pecks make up one bushel. You’ll notice that these fit into the compound numbers category that we discussed last week. Dry measure can be counted as compound numbers because 1) all of these units are within the same category and can be used in dry measure, 2) the units “fit into” each other, meaning that the smaller units go into the bigger units a certain number of times, and 3) the number of times each unit fits into the next is specific to this compound number. In other words, in order to be able to convert units of dry measure you must have them memorized or have a conversion chart available! Here is a visual that might help you understand the conversion of dry measure: One bushel: Peck: (4 pecks in a bushel) Quart: (8 quarts in one peck, 32 quarts in one bushel) Pint: (2 pints in a quart, 16 pints in one peck, 64 pints in one bushel) In today’s lesson, we will focus on converting only one layer of dry measure. You can see from the visual that there are, for example, 4 pints in two quarts. But what math can we use in order to arrive at that answer? It’s pretty simple. There are 2 pints in one quart, and we are wondering how many pints are in two quarts. So, we multiply 2x2=4. Thus, there are four pints in two quarts. How many quarts are in 3 pecks? We know that there are 8 quarts in 1 peck. So, to find out how many quarts are in 3 pecks we will multiply 8x3=24. There are 24 quarts in 3 pecks. How many pecks are in 16 bushels? We know that there are 4 pecks in one bushel. To find out how many in 16 bushels, we will multiply 16x4=64. There are 64 pecks in a bushel. You can also convert from a lower denomination to a higher one, but you will have to use division in order to do so. For example, How many quarts are in 116 pints? There are 2 pints in one quart, so in order to convert we will DIVIDE 116/2. The answer, 58, tells us how many quarts are equal to 116 pints. This lesson is based on p. 85-89 of Ray’s Practical Arithmetic. Assignment: 1. How many pints are in 32 quarts? 2. How many quarts are in 43 pecks? 3. How many pecks are in 78 bushels? .