How many swigs in a cup? This important question entered my consciousness at around seven thirty this morning. THG asked if I was ready for a refill to which I of course assented but stated that I’d need to take a few swigs first to make room. Actually does anything “enter” your consciousness. “Appeared in” would be an alternative but I digress.
In order to be able to answer the question of swigs it must be stated at the outset that there could be too many variables involved here to come up with a meaningful result. For example we don’t know how big the cup is, how full it is expected to be or indeed how big is the mouth of the swigger. Moreover even if there was a standard mouth size different people will almost certainly have different swigging techniques.
For the purpose of this exercise I think we can assume that all liquids have the same swig factor and that heat is not a determining factor. In other words the liquid is not too hot to be able to take a full swig. If it was then the swig is more likely to be a sip and even a tentative sip.
We really need an SI standard for cup size and dimensions to make this work and that the liquid is precisely four millimetres from the rim. One other issue is the angle at which the swig is taken. When drinking tea in bed I am more likely to swig from the corner of my mouth whereas the consumption of beer in a pub, not an exact analogy I know because I am unlikely to be drinking beer from an SI standard cup, will be performed in a more upright position. So angle of the dangle also needs to play a part in the calculation.
If we introduced the term “swig constant” to define the exact volume of a swig then individuals could be assigned a swig factor as a variable to indicate the relative size of their own swig against the standard. Makes a lorra sense to me.
I’m sure this would be a very useful datapoint for people in their everyday swigging lives with lots of useful applications/case studies. I can’t quite think of one right know but I daresay others more worldly wise than I will have that kind of info at their fingertips.
When I started writing this I felt sure that I’d be able to come up with the definitive swig but I am unsure that this is the case. I’ll leave it there for now and will come back to the subject if any Eureka moments appear in or enter my aforementioned consciousness.