science

Quintal

Quintal is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Quintal rather than just read about it. In short: The quintal or centner is a historical unit of mass in many countries that is usually defined as 100 base units, such as pounds or kilograms. It is a traditional unit of weight in France, Portugal, and Spain and their former colonies.

Key takeaways

Quintal belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Quintal to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Quintal from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The quintal or centner is a historical unit of mass in many countries that is usually defined as 100 base units, such as pounds or kilograms. It is a traditional unit of weight in France, Portugal, and Spain and their former colonies. It is commonly used for grain prices in wholesale markets in Ethiopia, Eritrea and India, where 1 quintal = 100 kg (220 lb). In British English, it referred to the hundredweight; in American English, it formerly referred to an uncommon measurement of 100 kg (220 lb).

Languages drawing its cognate name for the weight from Romance languages include French, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish quintal, Italian quintale, Esperanto kvintalo, Polish kwintal. Languages taking their cognates from Germanicized centner include the German Zentner, Lithuanian centneris, Swedish centner, Polish cetnar, Russian and Ukrainian центнер (tsentner) and Estonian tsentner. Many European languages have come to translate both the British hundredweight (8 stone or 112 pounds [50.80 kg]) and the American hundredweight (100 pounds [45.36 kg]), as their cognate form of quintal or centner.

Name

The concept has resulted in two different series of masses: Those based on the local pound (which after metrication was considered equivalent to 0.5 kg (1.1 lb), and those uprated to being based on the kilogram. In Albania (kuintal), Ethiopia (kuntal), and India, the 100 kg (220 lb) definition may have been introduced via Islamic trade. It is a standard measurement of mass for agricultural products in those countries. In France it used to be defined as 100 livres (pounds), about 48.95 kg (108 lb), and has been redefined as 100 kg (mesures usuelles), thus called metric quintal with symbol qq. In Spain, the quintal is still defined as 100 libras, or about 46 kg (101 lb), but the metric quintal is also defined as 100 kg; In Portugal a quintal is 128 arráteis or about 58.75 kg (130 lb). The German Zentner and the Danish centner are pound-based, and thus since metrication are defined as 50 kg (110 lb), whereas the Austrian and Swiss Zentner since metrication has been re-defined as 100 kg. In Germany a measure of 100 kg is named a Doppelzentner. In Italy, the quintale is commonly used to refer to 100 kg and is abbreviated to q, but the usage is considered informal and is not considered legally valid since 1990. Common agricultural units used in the Soviet Union were the 100 kg tsentner (центнер) and the term "tsentner per hectare". These are still used by countries that were part of the Soviet Union.

English use In English units of measurement both terms quintal and centner were once alternative names for the hundredweight and thus defined either as 100 lb (45.36 kg) or as 112 lb (50.80 kg). Also, in the Dominican Republic it is about 125 lb (56.70 kg). The German Zentner was introduced to the English language via Hanseatic trade as a measure of the weight of certain crops including hops for beer production. Commonly used in the Dominion (and later province) of Newfoundland up until the 1960s as a measure for 112 lb of salt cod. The quintal was defined in the United States in 1866 as 100 kg (220 lb). However, it is no longer used in the United States or by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), though it still appears in the statute. In France, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Indonesia, and India, it is still in daily use by farmers. It is also used in Brazil and other South American countries and in some African countries including Angola.

See also Kasson Act (1866) Hundredweight Zentner

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Quintal

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Quintal claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Quintal before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Quintal ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Quintal

In research: Quintal appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Quintal in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Quintal is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Customary units of measurement, Metricated units, Non-SI metric units, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Quintal outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Quintal in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Quintal means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Quintal out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Quintal in simple terms?

Why does Quintal matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Quintal?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Quintal.