Then there are the shapes of the ice. I hate the half-crescent ice most residential freezers crank out. I much prefer the bloated square ice that the Hoshizaki machines produce.

I feel powerful.

hate to burst your bubble but many Walmarts now have McDonalds in them, so yes, you can buy deodorant and nuggets at one place :/ sad but true.

Maybe so, but if you step on a scale and it can't tell you the same thing twice, the scale doesn't work. It may give you a ball park figure, but that isn't something to be seen as very useful.

Mind you here in Aberdeen sensible people who want a lot of ice for a party head for the Ice plant that the fish lorries use - just bring a shovel as the minimum will bury your coolers under a 5 foot pile of ice

Call the Department of Weights and Measures. Not for the whole principle nonsense of getting jacked out of 4 pounds of ice, but because you just know there is some pocket protecting, Office Space stapling, uber-weight-desknerd who is just waiting for the chance to go all Ultimate Warrior on Ronald McDonald's ass.

In my tests, the bag of rice fluctuated between 12 pounds and 18.5 pounds with me holding it, over 5 trials. When I weighed the bag by itself it fluctuated between 16 and 16.5 pounds. So could have undermeasured by as much as 4.5 lbs or overmeasured by as much 2 lbs. Clearly, this is a result of the movement of the human body, the positioning of the feet on the scale, the floor and other unknown factors.

Feel free to continue to argue with me, but until you perform your own tests that show otherwise, I don't care. I'm still curious to see someone do this with ice, as I feel relatively certain the margin of error would be larger, what with the more unpredictable shape that ice blocks take.

"Definitions of 'tare' (târ)
The American Heritage® Dictionary

(noun)

1) The weight of a container or wrapper that is deducted from the gross weight to obtain net weight."

Maybe you can read in there the part where it says a "container or wrapper", of which some guy standing on a scale is neither. The point of a tare is that the object holding the second object being weighed is unmoving, immobile, and does not fluctuate in its weight readings. Sorry to tell you this, a human is none of those things.

@Piaculum: Incorrect, but thanks for joining in the discussion.

@jswilson64: Also incorrect. If part of the methodology is flawed, the entire experiment is worthless.

@OnceWasCool: Its called reading. Try it sometime.

It's called Math.

Actually, pedant isn't the correct adjective to describe your complaint. Pretentious is more appropriate.

(We sell ours for $2.50 a bag)

@jtheletter: No but how you position your feet on a scale cam affect the reading, Ie. a lot of scales read inaccurately if you stand on the sides of the scales, rather than in the center. That said I don't think for a minute, this is anywhere close to 10 pounds. But I used to work at a McD's and these kids don't have a scale or anything (we didn't even get guidelines on how many scoops of ice to put in.) I was always told to fill it until it "had a lot of ice in it."

You deserve a ripoff today!

Really, why would anyone expect an honest value from Mickey D's any more?

The writing was on the wall years back when their tiny little "approximately 100% beef" patty came enveloped in a bun "approximately" 50% larger...

I'm sure that would give a less dramatically underweight answer.

@silver-bolt: You and I think so, but Mickey Dee's clearly thinks something else. Solution: court. Or arbitration. Or Thunderdome. Unless the States weights and measures have a rule about what "approximately" means.

But yes, I have honestly been considering buying a bag of ice and weighing it both ways to see what kind of margin of error there would be (I work so not exactly feasible the second the article was posted). However, I have nothing but a bathroom scale myself, so still turning over in my head how to get a more reliable weight on just the ice itself.

@AliyaBabasaur: Uncalibrated consumer weight scale. Get a calibrated, certified scale made for commercial/trade use., and you won't have that problem.

@HiPwr: Consumer weighting scales are made to be accurate and most responsive for above 50lbs. The size of scale on the markings make it hard to get accurate, to the pound readings instead of 5/10lb readings.

@Radi0logy: On the other hand, OP does not need the same accuracy and certification that a scientific lab needs. That 20 dollar off the shelf Walmart scale does just fine for a rough estimate, and 4lbs of a 10lb bag is pretty big discrepancy enough to say, OP was ripped off. Even more, its ludicrous to believe that you would need to use a scientific or certified scale to reweigh something that was probably never weighed with one in the first place. He needed accuracy to pounds, not ounces or grams.

@cleek: They're filled by employees-usually just before going on break.

@Applekid: At my old McD's we just sold "bags of ice"-no weight attached. I really wanted to just hand someone a Ziploc bag of ice and shrug.

@Cant_stop_the_rock: ok, so I got more information. Ice IS food. See [www.foodservice.com] for the explanation. Also, [www.aafes.com]

I guess it's also a concern for ice machines in food serving locations.

@morlo: Seriously, tell us why. I always thought that bagged ice was ok.

Yes but you never learned to spell pedantic I see. Next time if you want to take a shot at someone check your spelling :)

Please note that no where in my post did I indicate that there was a problem with his math, dumbass. There's a reason your college science labs fork over hundreds of dollars for scales as opposed to buying a 20 dollar model from Wal-Mart and telling students to "find your weight, then weigh yourself again with the specimen. Should be close enough..."

The human body is funny and very difficult to correctly weigh. Weighing yourself precisely, 10 times in a row, will almost guaranteed give you 10 different results (whether off by 5lbs or .2lbs is immaterial). It simply is not an accurate measurement. Its good enough for what its made to do, but it isn't as accurate as all of you seem to think it is. If the OP weighed himself twice, once with the bag and once without, then I have no doubt in my mind that the result is flawed.

now i wonder if both the convenience store part and the mcdonalds sell ice, and who has the better price? one convenience store is a BP and the other is a Kangaroo

No really, start with the store and see if they'll remedy the situation. If not, I just might contact Weights and Measures... labeling something 10lbs approximately doesn't cut it, especially when the same wording isn't used on the signage.

What the OP did is precisely what to do when you need to weigh something that's too light to be weighed on your scale by itself, but larger than the margin of error for masses within the range of accuracy.

I drank all the tea, and then poured a 16oz bottle of Snapple in the cup, and it filled to the top!

I wouldn't mind paying $1.07 for a 16oz tea, but at least market it that way.

Also, $1.00 for a 6.2 pound bag of ice isn't that bad a deal.

What if your ice cube was shaped like

Then I turned 10 and stopped trying to be pendantic.

@swedelibrarian: That's the thing. With a machine that is constantly pumping out ice, they just as well bag it up and sell it.

If you have ever used an analog scale, you see they will swing one way or another if you lean.

I have a $60 digital bathroom scale at home and a deli scale I found on the side of the road(a wire came loose inside, and the guy who was trying to fix it didn't have a set of security screw bits). If I want to do small precise, I use the deli scale, since it's a Hobart. To weight myself, I use the bathroom scale, and have stepped on it in different ways(left foot first vs right foot, leaning, etc) and have seen weight differences as much as 5 lb. in both directions.

@Scoobatz: Maybe he should procure the local crack cocaine dealer and inquire if he can borrow is Triple Beam scale. Those are pretty accurate I hear! :)

"never consume bagged ice"

I've always assumed that was a bad idea, but have never been able to convince my wife. I mean, I don't think it's considered to be "food," so it doesn't have to be treated like food. Granted, it's likely not going to hurt you, and ignorance is bliss, right?

forget grocery store, now it's fast food chain shrink ray!

@HiPwr: almost 4 pounds melted?

Just my thoughts.

@AliyaBabasaur: That's the most inaccurate scale I've ever heard of. Why even have one at all? You'd be better off guessing your weight.

If you don't like it, go to the gas station and pay $2 for the extra 38%...assuming they fill it to 10 lbs exactly.

@discounteggroll:

That would work if the ice melted and the water leaked out which is entirely possible. Water weighs ~8lbs per gallon so that means he must have lost a little less than half a gallon per bag to be light by 3.8 lbs which is hard to believe.

I'm guessing that orders are filled by asking one of the 16 year olds to fill a bag from the ice machine. We only know if he lost out on the purchase if he weighted every bag. Maybe the kid overfilled others.

So we know he was drinking at this party -- what was he smoking that made him want to weigh ice?

@Julia789: Perhaps Brad over-snuggled the ice and a portion of it melted out of the bag.

@Mike Gerow: I doubt it. I found "Mad About You" to be only marginally amusing.

@Radi0logy: On a good professional scale, vets use this method to weigh cats and puppies. My pediatrician's nurse used this method a couple of times when my (then) toddler would not hold still unless someone was snuggling him.

@Radi0logy: Why coulndn't he just put the bag on the scale?

@Gokuhouse: There is what appears to be a fill line on the bag and from the picture (with the bag flattened out on a table, mind you), the ice looks to be well above the line.

7 pounds or 10 pounds, $1 is cheaper than most place charge for a bag of ice around here. Really "1 pound of ice" is meaningless to me. I don't look at my cooler and say "looks like it'll take about 13 pounds of ice to fill it up." I look at the cooler, look at the bags and say "looks like it'll take 3 small bags or 2 big bags to fill it up." I go by the size of the bag, not the (alleged) weight.

Still, McDonald's needs to correct the label.

@ludwigk: It was labelled correctly- it said "approximately". I think the significance of the variance would be determined by a court.

I absolutely agree, however his calculation method is sound, which is what I was defending.

Although I'm still curious as to why he couldn't place a bag directly on the scale since it would fit and doesn't move around like pets.

Wouldn't a kitchen scale been a good way to go? Put a couple of full cereal boxes on it to ensure it's accurate and you'd be good to go. You could even remove the cellophane bag from the box to get an even more accurate measurement. So if your Trix weigh a pound and your scale registers a pound (or 2 pounds if you put 2 bags on it), I would trust the numbers.

Might I also suggest a labeling change? What if instead of "approximately 10 pounds" it was changed to "at least 7 pounds? So, if you get 8 you're thrilled, but if you get 6.5 you report them to Weights & Measures.

i worked in an ice manufacturing plant for many summers, in college, and the process there was pretty sloppy. ice came out of a giant machine, into a giant bin and was dumped into bags by a machine that mis-filled the bags so often that, when we were bagging, one guy would have to stand by the filling machine and pull out jammed or mis-filled bags. we were shooting for 8lb bags, but it wasn't unusual for light (or heavy) bags to get through. then, they get stacked on pallets and stored - sometimes for months - in a freezer. eventually they're loaded onto trucks, driven around all day, and finally thrown into ice machines by kids making minimum wage. every step of the way, there's an opportunity for melting or crushing (which makes melting easier when the chance comes).

Wasn't there an amusing episode of "Mad About You" where there was a whole diatribe about buying ice?

I came in here to say that. That's better than any price I get for ice around these parts.

@AliyaBabasaur: Then you need a new scale.

The problem is in the accuracy of the scale. The heavier Brad is, the more the weight of the ice gets lost in the margin of error. And those bathroom scales can be quite a bit inaccurate. I have a crappy digital one that can easily fluctuate a pound or two in either direction.

It would be better if he took several readings to see how precise his scale is.

I know... I think to much, but I'm an engineer. I can't help it :(

Why not?

To be slightly on-topic, this could be an issue for the dept. of weights and measures, who actually care if things are labeled correctly and such. A dollar for 6.3 lbs of ice is actually still a pretty good deal (I think I paid $1.50 for a 7 lb bag, which I did not weigh, a few weeks ago - again, feel free to assume that it was for organ theft).

What would be un-scientific about simple subtraction?

wait...that doesn't work

How exactly do you think Brad's method altered the calculation? It's not as though holding a bag makes 3.8 lbs of stuff disappear, otherwise boy would backpacking be easy!

@Radi0logy: huh? sounds ABSOLUTELY scientific, within the inherent error of the scale.

In our area, mcdonalds sells their ice and it's cheaper than convenience stores and most groceries...assuming your getting the full 10 pounds...which apparently doesn't happen!

If thats an actual picture...I don't even see how that could hold 10lbs, or if it could...I wouldn't want to drink water that dense o_0