Scruples to Grams (℈ to g)

1 scruple equals 1.2959782 grams exactly.

1 scruple = 1.2959782 grams

How to convert scruples to grams

To convert scruples to grams, multiply the number of scruples by 1.2959782. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply grams by 0.7716179176 (rounded).

grams = scruples × 1.2959782

Example: 10 scruples = 12.959782 grams.

About these units

Scruple (℈)

Troy & apothecaries'Historical unit (no longer in standard use)

20 grains (1.296 g). A unit of the old apothecaries' system of weights.

Physicians and pharmacists once wrote prescriptions in Latin, and the scruple appeared in them as a small symbol followed by a Roman numeral. At 20 grains, it was the smallest of the larger apothecaries' units and amounts to roughly 1.296 grams. Three scruples made a dram, and the grain beneath it is about 64.8 milligrams.

Pharmacists in Britain were pushed away from the old scheme in the nineteenth century. The Medical Act 1858 required avoirdupois weights, and the 1864 British Pharmacopoeia advised dropping the scruple and the dram, yet the troy-based apothecaries' system lingered in practice. It became obsolete for drugs when metric measures became mandatory in 1971, and the Weights and Measures Act 1976 abolished it.

Today the unit survives mainly as a historical curiosity in old recipes and medical texts. A modern pharmacist would give the same dose as about 1.3 grams.

1 scruple = 0.0012959782 kilograms (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Apothecaries' system; Wikipedia: Troy weight

Gram (g)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One thousandth of a kilogram. The standard unit for food quantities and small objects.

A gram was once defined as a small drop of the natural world. The French National Convention of 1795 set it as the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to a cube one hundredth of a metre on each side, a cubic centimetre. The reference temperature was first the melting point of ice and was later changed to the temperature of maximum density of water, about 4 degrees Celsius. The word came into French as gramme, from Late Latin gramma, itself from the Greek for a letter or small mark; in Late Antiquity it meant about one twenty-fourth of an ounce.

The gram was the base unit of mass in the centimetre-gram-second system, but in 1960 the SI took the kilogram as its base unit, which made the gram one thousandth of it. That is why it appears in so many everyday places: it is the standard for non-liquid ingredients in cooking and shopping, and nutrition labels commonly list contents per 100 g. For a sense of scale, a small paper clip or a pen cap weighs about a gram, and a Japanese 1-yen coin is close to exactly that, while a US penny is around 2.5 g.

1 gram = 0.001 kilograms (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Gram; Wikipedia: Kilogram

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