Measure Drinks with Google Calculator

I am off on a trip this weekend and, as usual, we are bringing a few bottles with us to setup our own hotel bar.  Figuring out just how much we’ll need is always a difficult task.  Cleverly using google calculator makes it a lot easier.

If you are not familiar with google calculator, it is an easy to use feature that performs calculations by entering them in the search box.  It can do basic calculations like addition and multiplication as well as much more fancy things like cosin and log.  The feature we’ll be exploiting is it’s ability to execute unit conversions.

The calculator understands many different units, as well as many physical and mathematical constants. These can be used in your expression. Many of these constants and units have both long and short names. You can use either name in most cases. For example, km and kilometer both work, as do c and the speed of light.

What they don’t tell you is that google understands the unit “shot.” So simple queries like “shots in a pint” or “shots in 750ml” (example) will tell you how many drinks you get of each bottle.  (The answers are 10.6 and 16.9).

If you are splitting a bottle with several friends, simple add a “/” and the number of people drinking.  So, “shots in 1.5 litres / 5″, tells you that a handle of vodka will give you and four of your buddies 6.7 shots each.

You can also do the conversion on the other end.  If you know you want 5 shots each for a group of 4, you enter “5 shots * 5 in liters”.  Google kindly informs you that you’re going to need a little over 1 liter.

For the full instructions on google calculator go here.