List of humorous units of measurement

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Many people have made use of, or invented, units of measurement intended primarily for their humor value. This is a list of such units invented by sources that are notable for reasons other than having made the unit itself, and that are widely known in the Anglophone world for their humor value.

Contents

Systems

FFF units

UnitDimensionDefinitionSI Value
furlong length660 ft201.168 m
firkin [lower-alpha 1] mass90 lb40.8233 kg
fortnight time14 days1,209,600 s

Most countries use the International System of Units (SI). In contrast, the furlong/firkin/fortnight system of units of measurement draws attention by being extremely old fashioned and off-beat at the same time. [1]

One furlong per fortnight is very nearly 1 centimetre per minute (to within 1 part in 400). Besides having the meaning of "any obscure unit", furlongs per fortnight have also served frequently in the classroom as an example on how to reduce a unit's fraction. The speed of light may be expressed as being roughly 1.8 terafurlongs per fortnight (or megafurlongs per microfortnight). [2] [3]

Great Underground Empire (Zork)

In the Zork series of games, the Great Underground Empire has its own system of measurements, the most frequently referenced of which is the bloit. Defined as the distance the king's favorite pet can run in one hour (spoofing a popular legend about the history of the foot), the length of the bloit varies dramatically, but the one canonical conversion to real-world units puts it at approximately two-thirds of a mile (1  km). [lower-alpha 2] Liquid volume is measured in gloops, and temperature in degrees Q (57 °Q is said to be the freezing point of water). [4]

Potrzebie

In issue 33, Mad published a partial table of the "Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures" developed by 19-year-old Donald E. Knuth, later a famed computer scientist. According to Knuth, the basis of this new revolutionary system is the potrzebie, which equals the thickness of Mad issue 26, or 2.2633484517438173216473 mm. [5]

Volume was measured in ngogn (equal to 1000 cubic potrzebies), mass in blintz (equal to the mass of 1 ngogn of halva, which is "a form of pie [with] a specific gravity of 3.1416 and a specific heat of .31416"), and time in seven named units (decimal powers of the average earth rotation, equal to 1 "clarke"). The system also features such units as whatmeworry , cowznofski , vreeble, hoo, and hah.

According to the "Date" system in Knuth's article, which substitutes a 10-clarke "mingo" for a month and a 100-clarke "cowznofski", for a year, the date of October 29, 2007 is rendered as "Cal 7, 201 C. M." (for Cowznofsko Madi, or "in the Cowznofski of our MAD"). The dates are calculated from October 1, 1952, the date MAD was first published. Dates before this point are referred to (perhaps tongue-in-cheek) as "B.M." ("Before MAD.") The ten "Mingoes" are: Tales (Tal.) Calculated (Cal.) To (To) Drive (Dri.) You (You) Humor (Hum.) In (In) A (A) Jugular (Jug.) Vein (Vei.)

Quantity

Sagan

As a humorous tribute to Carl Sagan and his association with the catchphrase "billions and billions", a sagan has been defined as a large quantity – technically at least four billion (two billion plus two billion) – of anything. [6] [7]

Length

Altuve

In the sport of baseball, the Altuve is an informal measurement of distance equal to 5 feet 5 inches, or 1.65 m: the height of Houston Astros player José Altuve, one of the shortest players in Major League Baseball. [8]

Attoparsec

Parsecs are used in astronomy to measure interstellar distances. A parsec is approximately 3.26 light-years or about 3.086×1016 m (1.917×1013  mi). Combining it with the "atto-" prefix (×10−18) yields attoparsec (apc), a conveniently human-scaled unit of about 3.086 centimetres (1.215 in) that is used only humorously. [9]

Beard-second

The beard-second is a unit of length inspired by the light-year, but applicable to extremely short distances such as those in integrated circuits. It is the length an average beard grows in one second. Kemp Bennett Kolb defines the distance as exactly 100  angstroms (10  nanometres), [10] as does Nordling and Österman's Physics Handbook. [11] Google Calculator uses 5 nm. [12]

Bee's dick

An Australian term for a very small distance, as in "he missed crashing into the truck by a bee’s dick". It is derived from the presumed small size of a male bee's penis. [13]

Jimmy Griffin Snow Index

Television station WKBW-TV in Buffalo, New York developed the "Jimmy Griffin Snow Index" to measure the potential severity of a snowstorm. It is named after former Buffalo mayor James D. Griffin, who in 1985 earned the nickname "Six Pack Jimmy" after suggesting residents grab a six-pack of Genesee beer to wait out an upcoming snowstorm. The index is measured in cans of beer, with roughly one can for every 4 inches (10 cm) of expected snowfall (the index is not perfectly linear at its lower levels as originally introduced); thus, Griffin's six-pack would be recommended for a storm bringing two feet of snow. [14]

Mickey

One mickey is the smallest resolvable unit of distance by a given computer mouse pointing device. It is named after Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse cartoon character. [15] Mouse motion is reported in horizontal and vertical mickeys. Device sensitivity is usually specified in mickeys per inch. Typical resolution is 500 mickeys per inch (16 mickeys per mm), but resolutions up to 16,000 mickeys per inch (600 mickeys per mm) are available.

Muggeseggele

A Muggeseggele is a humorous Alemannic German idiom used in Swabia to designate a nonspecific very small length or amount of something; it refers to a housefly's scrotum. [16] [17]

Sheppey

A measure of distance equal to about 7⁄8 of a mile (1.4  km ), defined as the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque. The Sheppey is the creation of Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, included in The Meaning of Liff , their dictionary of putative meanings for words that are actually just place names. [18] It is named after the Isle of Sheppey in the UK.

Smoot

The Smoot is a unit of length, defined as the height in 1958 of Oliver R. Smoot, who later became the chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and then the president of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The unit is used to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge. Canonically, and originally, in 1958 when Smoot was a Lambda Chi Alpha pledge at MIT (class of 1962), the bridge was measured to be 364.4 Smoots, plus or minus one ear, using Mr. Smoot himself as a ruler. [19] At the time, Smoot was 5 feet, 7 inches, or 170 cm, tall. [20] Google Earth and Google Calculator include the smoot as a unit of measurement.

The Cambridge (Massachusetts) police department adopted the convention of using Smoots to measure the locations of accidents and incidents on the bridge. When the original markings were removed or covered over during bridge maintenance, the police had to request that someone reapply the Smoot scale markings. [21] During a major bridge rebuild, the concrete sidewalk was permanently divided into segments one Smoot in length, as opposed to the regular division of six feet. [22]

Wiffle

A wiffle, also referred to as a WAM for Wiffle (ball) assisted measurement, is equal to a sphere 89 millimetres (3.5 inches) in diameter – the size of a Wiffle ball, a perforated, light-weight plastic ball frequently used by marine biologists as a size reference in photos to measure corals and other objects. [23] [24] The spherical shape makes it omnidirectional and perfect for taking a speedy measurement, and the open design also allows it to avoid being crushed by water pressure. Wiffle balls are a much cheaper alternative to using two reference lasers, which often pass straight through gaps in thin corals.

A scientist on the research vessel EV Nautilus is credited with pioneering the technique. [25] [ failed verification ]

Area

Barn, outhouse, shed

A barn is a serious metric unit of area used by nuclear physicists to quantify the scattering or absorption cross-section of very small particles, such as atomic nuclei. [26] One barn is equal to 1.0×10−28 m2. The name derives from the folk expressions "As big as a barn," and "Couldn't hit the broad side of a barn", used by particle accelerator physicists to refer to the probability of achieving a collision between particles. For nuclear purposes, 1.0×10−28 m2 is actually rather large. [27] The outhouse (1.0×10−6 barns) and shed (1.0×10−24 barns) are derived by analogy. [28] [29] [30]

Nanoacre

The nanoacre is a unit of real estate on a very-large-scale integration (VLSI) chip equal to 0.00627264 sq in (4.0468564224 mm2) or the area of a square of side length 0.0792 in (2.01168 mm). VLSI nanoacres have similar total costs to acres in Silicon Valley. [31]

Volume

Barn-megaparsec

This unit is similar in concept to the attoparsec, combining very large and small scales. When a barn (a very small unit of area used for measuring the cross sectional area of atomic nuclei) is multiplied by a megaparsec (a very large unit of length used for measuring the distances between galaxies), the result is a human-scaled unit of volume approximately equal to 2⁄3 of a teaspoon (about 3 mL). [32] [33]

Hubble-barn

Similar to the barn-megaparsec, the Hubble-barn uses the barn with the Hubble length, which is the radius of the visible universe as derived by using the Hubble constant and the speed of light. This amounts to around 13.1 litres (3.46 US gallons, 2.88 Imperial gallons).

Power

Donkey power

This facetious engineering unit is defined as 250 watts  –about a third of a horsepower. [34]

Pirate-ninja

A pirate-ninja is defined as one kilowatt-hour (3.6 MJ) per Martian day, or sol. It is equivalent to approximately 40.55 watts. It is used in the 2011 novel The Martian by Andy Weir. Weir said in a 2015 interview that the Curiosity rover team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory uses the similar unit 'watt-hours per sol' in their meetings, and the team told Weir that they should just call them milli-pirate-ninjas. [35]

Time

Friedman

The Friedman is approximately six months, specifically six months in the future, and named after columnist Thomas Friedman who repeatedly used the span in reference to when a determination of Iraq's future could be surmised. [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42]

Jiffy

A jiffy is a unit of time used in computer operating systems, being the interval of time between system timer interrupts. This interval varies from system to system, but is typically between 1 and 10 milliseconds.

Microcentury

According to Gian-Carlo Rota, [43] the mathematician John von Neumann used the term microcentury to denote the maximum length of a lecture. One microcentury is 52 minutes and 35.7 seconds—  one millionth of a century. [44]

Nanocentury

A unit sometimes used in computing, the term is believed to have been coined by IBM in 1969 from the design objective "never to let the user wait more than a few nanocenturies for a response". [45] A nanocentury is one-billionth of a century or approximately 3.156 seconds. Tom Duff is cited as saying that, to within half a percent, a nanocentury is π seconds. [46]

New York second

The New York second ("the shortest unit of time in the multiverse") is defined in Terry Pratchett's novel Lords and Ladies as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind one honking. [47] The idiomatic expression "in a New York minute", used in various contexts to mean an instant or a very short time, is of similar origin, referring to the busyness of New York and impatience of its residents.

Ohnosecond

An "ohnosecond" is the second after one makes a terrible mistake, such as deleting the wrong file or sending a text message to the wrong person, where the person in question can do nothing but say "oh no". [48] The term is believed to originate from Elizabeth Powell Crowe's 1993 novel, The Electronic Traveler. [49]

Scaramucci

A Scaramucci (or Mooch) is 11 (sometimes 10) days and is named after the length of White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci's tenure under President Trump. [50] [51] [52] [53]

Shake

In nuclear physics, a shake is 10 nanoseconds, the approximate time for a generation within a nuclear chain reaction. The term comes from the expression "two shakes of a lamb's tail", meaning quickly. [54]

Tatum

A tatum is the "lowest regular pulse train that a listener intuitively infers from the timing of perceived musical events". It is named after the jazz pianist Art Tatum, [55] who was notable for his high-speed playing.

Radioactivity

Banana equivalent dose, the amount of radiation exposure gained from eating an average banana. [56] A single BED is considered to be negligibly small, posing no health risk.

Non-conventional

These units describe dimensions which are not and cannot be covered by the International System of Units.

Blatt (odor)

In Steven Levy's book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution , Levy mentions how Richard Greenblatt prioritized his work over bathing, leading to a strong stench. Therefore, Greenblatt's coworkers conceived of the blatt as a joke, though the milliblatt was used more, as the blatt was so powerful it was "just about inconceivable". [57]

Canard (quackery)

The canard is a unit of quackery created by Andy Lewis in the need for a fractional index measuring pseudoscience. [58] It is proposed as an SI unit to replace the old "Crackpot Index" [59] that was presented in 1998.

Quack words include 'energy', 'holistic', 'vibrations', 'magnetic healing', 'quantum'. These words are usually borrowed from physics and used to promote dubious health claims.

The scale is from 0 to 10, with 0 being 'no quackery' and 10 being 'complete quackery'. [60] [ verification needed ]

Dirac (information flow)

Physicist Paul Dirac was known among his colleagues for his precise yet taciturn nature. His colleagues in Cambridge jokingly defined a unit of a dirac which was one word per hour. [61]

Garn (nausea)

The Garn is a unit used by NASA to measure nausea and travel sickness caused by space adaptation syndrome. It is named after astronaut Jake Garn, who was frequently sick during tests and on orbit. [62] A score of one Garn means the sufferer is completely incapacitated. [63]

gkB (irritation)

The Swedish video game magazine Sega Force, no. 1, 1994, measured irritation in gram knäckeBröd (gkB), or grams of crispbread crumbs per cm2 in a bed where you've just lain down to sleep.

The Sega Genesis game T2 The Movie was judged to have an irritation level of 8.6 gkB, which, according to the magazine, "is so high that you'll need an oxygen mask, and is dangerously close to the 'berzerk' limit, which in Sweden is just over 9 gkB if the summer has been nice". [64]

Hawking Index (reading capacity)

The Hawking Index (HI) is a unit given as a percentage, of how many people will finish a book they start. Invented by mathematician Jordan Ellenberg, books with a lower HI are less likely to be completed. It is named after Stephen Hawking, whose book A Brief History of Time scores 6.6% on the scale. [65]

Helen (beauty)

Helen of Troy (from the Iliad ) is widely known as "the face that launched a thousand ships". Thus, 1 millihelen is the amount of beauty needed to launch a single ship. Other derived units such as the negative helen (the power to beach ships) have also been described.

Lenat (bogosity)

The unit of bogosity, i.e. how bogus a person, claim, or proceeding is, derived from the fictional field of Quantum bogodynamics, is the Lenat, named after Douglas Lenat, a computer scientist and professor who failed one of his students on an exam because they answered "AI is bogus" on all of the questions. The Lenat itself is seldom used, as it is understood to be too large for normal conversation; its most common form is the microLenat. [66] [67]

Lovelace (software quality)

The Lovelace (Ll) is the unit of the lack of quality of an operating system, i.e., a measure of system administrators' opinions about how badly the system "sucks". The unit has been coined by members of the system administrator profession who hold a basic tenet that "software that does not suck does not exist". According to the Usenet alt.sysadmin.recovery FAQ, [68] one Lovelace is considered a rather large quantity. SI prefixes are commonly used to denote practical quantities.

MegaFonzie (coolness)

A MegaFonzie is a fictional unit of measurement of an object's coolness invented by Professor Farnsworth in the 2003 Futurama episode "Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV". A 'Fonzie' is about the amount of coolness inherent in the Happy Days character Fonzie. [69]

Pouter (obstruction)

During World War II, scientists working for the British Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development encountered a particularly obstructive Royal Navy officer called Commander Pouter, for whom the unit of Obstruction was named, due to his implacable opposition to any work being carried out in the field for which he was personally responsible.

Subsequently, the micropouter was used, as it was hoped that no individual of a similarly difficult disposition would be encountered, and the pouter was too large a unit for everyday use. [70]

Rictus scale (media coverage of earthquakes)

Tom Weller suggests the Rictus scale for earthquake intensity (a takeoff of the conventional Richter scale), measuring media coverage of the event. [71]

Rictus scale #Richter scale equivalentMedia coverage
10–3Small articles in local papers
23–5Lead story on local news; mentioned on network news
35–6.5Lead story on network news; wire-service photos appear in newspapers nationally; governor visits scene
46.5–7.5Network correspondents sent to scene; president visits area; commemorative T-shirts appear
57.5+Covers of weekly news magazines; network specials; "instant books" appear

Shortz (fame)

This is a unit of fame, hype, or infamy, named for the American puzzle creator and editor, Will Shortz. The measure is the number of times one's name has appeared in The New York Times crossword puzzle as either a clue or solution. Arguably, this number should only be calculated for the Shortz era (1993–present). Shortz himself is 1 Shortz famous.[ citation needed ]

Springfield (county fairs)

Invented by San Francisco Chronicle culture critic Peter Hartlaub, this rates county fairs by the quality of their musical acts. Fairs are rated a scale of one to four Springfields, "in honor of Rick Springfield, arguably the greatest county fair free act in history." [72]

Standardised Giraffe Unit (animal size)

AnimalSGU Units
Corgi0.05
Canada Goose0.14
Duck0.2
Penguin0.2
Half a giraffe0.5
Peacock0.55
Elephant1.25

The standardised giraffe unit (SGU) is proposed by the European Space Agency's Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre as a standardised unit for animal size reference. [73] The agency defines defined the SGU in terms of other animals as shown in the adjoining table.

Thaum (magic)

In the Discworld series of comic fantasy novels by Terry Pratchett, the thaum is basic unit of magical strength, definded as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal sized billiard balls. [74]

Warhol (fame)

This is a unit of fame or hype, derived from the dictum attributed to Andy Warhol that "everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes". It represents fifteen minutes of fame. Some multiples are:

First used by Cullen Murphy in 1997. [75]

Wheaton (influence)

The Wheaton is a measurement of Twitter followers relative to celebrity Wil Wheaton, equal to 500,000 followers. The unit was invented by John Kovalic in the May 21, 2009 edition of his webcomic Dork Tower . [76] The comic includes references to units named for other celebrities, such as Neil Gaiman, John Hodgman, Jonathan Coulton, and Felicia Day. [77] [78]

Minutes per Big Mac (economic)

Minutes per Big Mac (alternatively, minimum wage minutes per Big Mac) refers to how many minutes one has to work in a country or region at average wage (or, correspondingly, at minimum wage) to afford one Big Mac, a hamburger sold by McDonald's in that country or region. [79] [80] [81]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ The firkin is normally a unit of volume equal to nine imperial gallons (41 L). The "firkin" of the FFF system is the firkin of water, i.e. the mass of nine imperial gallons of water. The imperial gallon was originally based on the volume of ten pounds (4.5 kg) of water (under certain thermodynamic conditions). This gives us a water density of ten pounds per imperial gallon (1 kg/L). Using this as a basis of our calculation we obtain ninety pounds (41 kg) for the firkin of water.
  2. ↑ Dimwit Flathead defoliated the Fublio Valley to make a huge statue of himself. The literature for Zork describes the area defoliated as 400,000 acres (which equals 625 square miles), whereas that for Zork Zero gives the area as 1,400 square bloits. This would define the bloit as 0.668 miles, 3,527.8 feet, or 1.075 km.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Astronomical unit</span> Mean distance between Earth and the Sun

The astronomical unit is a unit of length defined to be exactly equal to 149,597,870,700 m. Historically, the astronomical unit was conceived as the average Earth-Sun distance, before its modern redefinition in 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minute and second of arc</span> Units for measuring angles

A minute of arc, arcminute (arcmin), arc minute, or minute arc, denoted by the symbol ′, is a unit of angular measurement equal to 1/60 of one degree. Since one degree is 1/360 of a turn, or complete rotation, one arcminute is 1/21600 of a turn. The nautical mile (nmi) was originally defined as the arc length of a minute of latitude on a spherical Earth, so the actual Earth circumference is very near 21600 nmi. A minute of arc is π/10800 of a radian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Furlong</span> Unit of length equal to 660 feet or about 201 metres

A furlong is a measure of distance in imperial units and United States customary units equal to one-eighth of a mile, equivalent to any of 660 feet, 220 yards, 40 rods, 10 chains or approximately 201 metres. It is now mostly confined to use in horse racing, where in many countries it is the standard measurement of race lengths, and agriculture, where it is used to measure rural field lengths and distances.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metric system</span> Metre-based systems of measurement

The metric system is a decimal-based system of measurement. The current international standard for the metric system is the International System of Units, in which all units can be expressed in terms of seven base units: the metre, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole, and candela.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kilometre</span> Unit of length equal to 1,000 metres

The kilometre, spelt kilometer in American English and Philippine English, is a unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), equal to one thousand metres. It is the preferred measurement unit to express distances between geographical places on land in most of the world; notable exceptions are the United States and the United Kingdom where the statute mile is used.

A barn is a metric unit of area equal to 10−28 m2 (100 fm2). Originally used in nuclear physics for expressing the cross sectional area of nuclei and nuclear reactions, today it is also used in all fields of high-energy physics to express the cross sections of any scattering process, and is best understood as a measure of the probability of interaction between small particles. A barn is approximately the cross-sectional area of a uranium nucleus. The barn is also the unit of area used in nuclear quadrupole resonance and nuclear magnetic resonance to quantify the interaction of a nucleus with an electric field gradient. While the barn never was an SI unit, the SI standards body acknowledged it in the 8th SI Brochure due to its use in particle physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Millimetre</span> Unit of length 1/1000 of a metre

The millimetre or millimeter is a unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), equal to one thousandth of a metre, which is the SI base unit of length. Therefore, there are one thousand millimetres in a metre. There are ten millimetres in a centimetre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Smoot</span> Non-standard unit of length

The smoot is a nonstandard, humorous unit of length created as part of an MIT fraternity pledge to Lambda Chi Alpha by Oliver R. Smoot, who in October 1958 lay down repeatedly on the Harvard Bridge between Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, so that his fraternity brothers could use his height to measure the length of the bridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foot (unit)</span> Customary unit of length

The foot is a unit of length in the British imperial and United States customary systems of measurement. The prime symbol, ′, is commonly used to represent the foot. In both customary and imperial units, one foot comprises 12 inches, and one yard comprises three feet. Since an international agreement in 1959, the foot is defined as equal to exactly 0.3048 meters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Potrzebie</span>

Potrzebie is a Polish word popularized by its non sequitur use as a running gag in the early issues of Mad not long after the comic book began in 1952.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Point (typography)</span> Measurement unit used in typography

In typography, the point is the smallest unit of measure. It is used for measuring font size, leading, and other items on a printed page. The size of the point has varied throughout printing's history. Since the 18th century, the size of a point has been between 0.18 and 0.4 millimeters. Following the advent of desktop publishing in the 1980s and 1990s, digital printing has largely supplanted the letterpress printing and has established the desktop publishing (DTP) point as the de facto standard. The DTP point is defined as 1⁄72 of an inch (1/72 × 25.4 mm ≈ 0.353 mm) and, as with earlier American point sizes, is considered to be 1⁄12 of a pica.

A system of units of measurement, also known as a system of units or system of measurement, is a collection of units of measurement and rules relating them to each other. Systems of measurement have historically been important, regulated and defined for the purposes of science and commerce. Instances in use include the International System of Units or SI, the British imperial system, and the United States customary system.

English units were the units of measurement used in England up to 1826, which evolved as a combination of the Anglo-Saxon and Roman systems of units. Various standards have applied to English units at different times, in different places, and for different applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of measurement</span>

The earliest recorded systems of weights and measures originate in the 3rd or 4th millennium BC. Even the very earliest civilizations needed measurement for purposes of agriculture, construction and trade. Early standard units might only have applied to a single community or small region, with every area developing its own standards for lengths, areas, volumes and masses. Often such systems were closely tied to one field of use, so that volume measures used, for example, for dry grains were unrelated to those for liquids, with neither bearing any particular relationship to units of length used for measuring cloth or land. With development of manufacturing technologies, and the growing importance of trade between communities and ultimately across the Earth, standardized weights and measures became critical. Starting in the 18th century, modernized, simplified and uniform systems of weights and measures were developed, with the fundamental units defined by ever more precise methods in the science of metrology. The discovery and application of electricity was one factor motivating the development of standardized internationally applicable units.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stadiametric rangefinding</span>

Stadiametric rangefinding, or the stadia method, is a technique of measuring distances with a telescopic instrument. The term stadia comes from a Greek unit of length Stadion which was the typical length of a sports stadium of the time. Stadiametric rangefinding is used for surveying and in the telescopic sights of firearms, artillery pieces, or tank guns, as well as some binoculars and other optics. It is still widely used in long-range military sniping, but in many professional applications it is being replaced with microwave, infrared, or laser rangefinding methods. Although much easier to use, electronic rangefinders can give away the shooter's position to a well-equipped adversary, and the need for accurate range estimation has existed for much longer than electronic rangefinders small and rugged enough to be suitable for military use.

The furlong–firkin–fortnight (FFF) system is a humorous system of units based on unusual or impractical measurements. The length unit of the system is the furlong, the mass unit is the mass of a firkin of water, and the time unit is the fortnight. Like the SI or metre–kilogram–second systems, there are derived units for velocity, volume, mass and weight, etc. It is sometimes referred as the FFFF system where the fourth 'F' is degrees Fahrenheit for temperature.

Capacities of brewery casks were formerly measured and standardised according to a specific system of English units. The system was originally based on the ale gallon of 282 cubic inches. In United Kingdom and its colonies, with the adoption of the imperial system in 1824, the units were redefined in terms of the slightly smaller imperial gallon. The older units continued in use in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the metric system</span> History of the metric system measurement standards

The history of the metric system began during the Age of Enlightenment with measures of length and weight derived from nature, along with their decimal multiples and fractions. The system became the standard of France and Europe within half a century. Other measures with unity ratios were added, and the system went on to be adopted across the world.

A number of different units of measurement were used in Sri Lanka to measure quantities like length, mass and capacity from very ancient times. Under the British Empire, imperial units became the official units of measurement and remained so until Sri Lanka adopted the metric system in the 1970s.

References

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  1. ↑ Kissell, Joe. "Furlongs Per Fortnight | Interesting Thing of the Day". itotd.com.
  2. ↑ "c in furlongs per fortnight - Google Search" . Retrieved March 10, 2006.
  3. ↑ "FAQ for newsgroup UK.rec.sheds, version 2&3/7th". 2000. Archived from the original (TXT) on March 6, 2006. Retrieved March 10, 2006.
  4. ↑ Encyclopedia Frobozzica, Infocom, 1993.
  5. ↑ Donald E. Knuth, Selected Papers on Fun & Games, Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information, 2011, chapter 1: The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures, pages 1--8. The chapter is a reprint of the MAD #33 article "The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures". Neatorama.com. January 15, 2008. Retrieved September 5, 2011.. In the addendum, Knuth clarifies that the accidental dropping of the second 4 in the 7th decimal place was a typo by the MAD typesetters.
  6. ↑ "sagan". Jargon File.
  7. ↑ P.M. Gresshoff (2004). "Book Reviews: Plant Signal Transduction". Annals of Botany. 93 (6): 783–786. doi:10.1093/aob/mch102. PMC   4242307 .
  8. ↑ "Diminutive Altuve drawing fans attention". Yardbarker. October 6, 2018.
  9. ↑ "jargon, node: attoparsec". jargon.net.
  10. ↑ Kemp Bennett Kolb (2008). "The beard-second, a new unit of length". This Book Warps Space and Time. Andrews McMeel. p. 13. ISBN   978-0-7407-7713-4.
  11. ↑ Nordling, Carl; Österman, Jonny (2006). Physics Handbook for Science and Engineering (eighth ed.). Studentlitteratur. ISBN   91-44-04453-4.
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