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How to Convert a Gram to a Teaspoon

Cooking is an art. Read Julia Child's four-page and 27-ingredient recipe for cassoulet de porc et de mouton (baked beans with pork and lamb, or mutton) in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and you'll appreciate the occasional complexities of a cook's work. The teaspoon (tsp.) is a common unit of volume you would use in a recipe like Child's, while the gram (g) is a common metric unit of weight. Because you must take the density of the measured substance into account when converting from weight to volume, the conversion from grams to teaspoons requires more than one step. At the same time, it's easy to do and interesting.

Things You'll Need

Pencil
Paper
Table of common substance densities or Internet access
Calculator

Instructions

- 1
  Write the number of grams of a substance you want to convert to teaspoons. For example, write "7 grams of fine table salt."
- 2
  Consult a text or online table of substance densities and learn the density of the substance you are analyzing. For example, if you consult the ASI website, you will learn that the bulk density of fine table salt is 1.38 grams per cubic centimeter. Density is typically measured in grams per cubic centimeter. Bulk density represents a standardized measurement of the density of a powdered or particulate substance like salt, pepper or sugar.
- 3
  Find the quotient of the number of grams you have written and the density of the substance using a calculator. For example, 7/1.38 = 5.0724. Your table salt sample represents 5.0724 cubic centimeters of salt.
- 4
  Note that a volume of 1 cubic centimeter by definition equals 1 milliliter (1 ml). Your salt sample requires 5.0724 ml of volume.
- 5
  Find the quotient of your milliliter value and 5 using a calculator, because 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml. In this case, 5.0724/5 = 1.014. Therefore, 7 g of fine table salt equals approximately 1.0 teaspoon of salt.

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