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List of humorous units of measurement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
See also: List of unusual units of measurement

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.

Systems

FFF units

Main article: FFF system
Unit Dimension Definition SI Value
furlong length 660 ft 201.168 m
firkin[a] mass 90 lb 40.8233 kg
fortnight time 14 days 1,209,600 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). Indeed, if the inch were defined as 2.54 cm rather than 2.54 cm exactly, it would be 1 cm/min. 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).[b] 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 2.263348517438173216473 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

See also: Indefinite and fictitious numbers § Sagan's number

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. This is a reference to Houston Astros player José Altuve, who stands 5 feet 5 inches tall, making him 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]

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.[13]

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.[14] 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.

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.[15] It is named after the Isle of Sheppey in the UK.

Smoot

Main article: 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.[16] At the time, Smoot was 5 feet, 7 inches, or 170 cm, tall.[17] 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.[18] 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.[19]

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.[20][21] 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.[22][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.[23] 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.[24] The outhouse (1.0×10−6 barns) and shed (1.0×10−24 barns) are derived by analogy.

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.[25]

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).[26][27]

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.[28]

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. Andy Weir, author of The Martian, revealed in a 2015 interview with Adam Savage that the Curiosity rover team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory references milli-pirate-ninjas in their meetings.[29]

Time

Friedman

Main article: Friedman (unit)

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.[30][31][32][33][34][35][36]

Scaramucci

A Scaramucci is 11 (sometimes 10) days and is named after the length of White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci's tenure under President Trump. A Scaramucci is shortened to a Mooch.[37][38][39][40]

Jiffy

Main article: Jiffy (time)

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,[41] 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.[42]

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".[43] 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.[44]

New York Second

The New York Second ("the shortest unit of time in the multiverse") is defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind one honking.[45] 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.

Onosecond

An "onosecond" 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".[46]

Shake

Main article: shake (unit)

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.[47]

Tatum

Main article: tatum (music)

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,[48] who was notable for his high-speed playing.

Radioactivity

Banana equivalent dose, the amount of radiation exposure gained from eating an average banana.[49] 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.

Beauty: Helen

Main article: Helen (unit)

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.

Bogosity: Lenat

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. The Lenat is seldom used, as it is understood that it is too large for normal conversation. Its most common form is the microLenat.[50][51]

Coolness: MegaFonzie

A MegaFonzie is a fictional unit of measurement of an object's coolness invented by Professor Farnsworth in the Futurama episode, "Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV." A 'Fonzie' is about the amount of coolness inherent in the Happy Days character Fonzie.[52]

Media coverage of earthquakes: Rictus scale

Tom Weller suggests the Rictus scale for earthquake intensity (a takeoff of the conventional Richter scale), measuring media coverage of the event.[53]

Rictus scale # Richter scale equivalent Media coverage
1 0–3 Small articles in local papers
2 3–5 Lead story on local news; mentioned on network news
3 5–6.5 Lead story on network news; wire-service photos appear in newspapers nationally; governor visits scene
4 6.5–7.5 Network correspondents sent to scene; president visits area; commemorative T-shirts appear
5 7.5+ Covers of weekly news magazines; network specials; "instant books" appear

Fame: Shortz

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– ). Shortz himself is 1 Shortz famous.

Fame: Warhol

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:

  • 1 kilowarhol – famous for 15,000 minutes, or 10.42 days. A sort of metric "nine-day wonder".
  • 1 megawarhol – famous for 15 million minutes, or 28.5 years.

First used by Cullen Murphy in 1997.[54]

Also used simply as meaning 15 minutes; as the Warhol worm, that could infect all vulnerable machines on the entire Internet within 15 minutes.

Information flow: Dirac

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.[55]

Irritability: gkB

The Swedish video game magazine Sega Force, nr 1, 1994, measured irritation in "gram knäckeBröd", or grams of crispbread crumbs per cm² in a bed where you've just laid down to sleep.

The Sega Genesis game T2 The Movie had 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".[56]

Nausea: Garn

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.[57] A score of one Garn means the sufferer is completely incapacitated.[58]

Obstruction: Pouter

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.[59]

Odor: Blatt

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 as the blatt was so powerful it was "just about inconceivable".[60]

Quality: Lovelace

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 implemented it is. 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,[61] one Lovelace is considered a rather large quantity. Similar to other large units like the Farad and the Henry, SI prefixes are commonly used to denote practical quantities.

Quackery: Canard

The canard is a unit of quackery created by Andy Lewis in the need for a fractional index measuring pseudoscience.[62] It is proposed as an SI unit to replace the old "Crackpot Index"[63] 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'.[64][verification needed]

Reading: Hawking Index

Main article: Hawking Index

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]

Twitter followers: Wheaton

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.[66] The comic includes references to units named for other celebrities, such as Neil Gaiman, John Hodgman, Jonathan Coulton, and Felicia Day.[67][68]

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.

References

  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. ^ "The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures". Neatorama.com. January 15, 2008. Retrieved September 5, 2011.
  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. 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.
  12. ^ "Google Search: 5 nanometers in beard-seconds". Archived from the original on June 9, 2017.
  13. ^ Parker, Andy (December 5, 2017). Jimmy Griffin Snow Index for the December 5-8, 2017 lake-effect snow event. WKBW-TV official Twitter account. Retrieved December 5, 2017.
  14. ^ Rowlett, Russ (November 20, 2001). "How Many? A Dictionary of Units of Measurement". University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Archived from the original on July 1, 2014. Retrieved January 23, 2014.
  15. ^ Douglas Adams & John Lloyd (1984). The Meaning of Liff. ISBN 0-517-55347-3.
  16. ^ "Smoot in Stone". MIT News. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. June 4, 2009. Retrieved July 20, 2010. Specifically noting the bridge's length of 364.4 Smoots (+/- 1 ear), the plaque, a gift of the MIT Class of 1962, honors the prank's 50th anniversary.
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  18. ^ "Keyser describes his top five hacks". MIT News Office. Retrieved January 20, 2013.
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  20. ^ "Live Webcams: Scientists Studying Corals Damaged by Oil in the Gulf of Mexico". Penn State Science. June 25, 2014.
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  29. ^ Adam Savage & Andy Weir (June 11, 2015). Adam Savage Interviews 'The Martian' Author Andy Weir - The Talking Room (streaming media). Tested.com. Event occurs at 33:15. Archived from the original on December 13, 2021. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  30. ^ "Friedman Finally Urges Fixed Date for U.S. Pullout". Editor & Publisher. December 7, 2006.
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  33. ^ Drum, Kevin (November 1, 2006). "Meltdown in Iraq..." The Washington Monthly.
  34. ^ Alterman, Eric (April 5, 2007). "The Politics of Pundit Prestige..." The Nation. Archived from the original on July 2, 2009.
  35. ^ Froomkin, Dan (May 8, 2007). "Four More Months?". The Washington Post.
  36. ^ Yglesias, Matthew (May 9, 2007). "More Friedman Units to Come". The Atlantic.
  37. ^ Krawczyk, Kathryn (August 29, 2019). "Anthony Scaramucci measures time in 'Mooches'". The Week.
  38. ^ Rentoul, John (September 6, 2019). "The Top 10: Units of Measurement". The Independent.
  39. ^ Garg, Anu. Wordsmith http://www.wordsmith.org/words/scaramouch.html. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  40. ^ "SALT Talks: Election 2020 with Anthony Scaramucci".
  41. ^ Gian-Carlo Rota (January 1997). "Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught". Notices of the AMS. Archived from the original on February 5, 2012.
  42. ^ "Microcentury - Susam Pal". susam.in. Retrieved November 3, 2021.
  43. ^ IBM Data Processing Division (1969). Proceedings: IBM Scientific Computing Symposium on Computers in Chemistry. International Business Machines Corporation. p. 82.
  44. ^ Jon Louis Bentley (2000). Programming pearls. Addison-Wesley Professional. p. 70. ISBN 0-201-65788-0.
  45. ^ Pratchett, Terry. "Lords and Ladies".
  46. ^ Scott, Tom (June 1, 2020). "The Worst Typo I Ever Made". YouTube. Archived from the original on December 13, 2021. Retrieved February 4, 2021.
  47. ^ Clancy, Tom (1991). The Sum of All Fears. Putnam. p. 702. ISBN 0-399-13615-0.
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  49. ^ BoingBoing: "Bananas are radioactive"
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  53. ^ Weller, Tom (1985). Science Made Stupid. Houghton Mifflin. p. 76. ISBN 0-395-36646-1.
  54. ^ Murphy, Cullen (October 2, 1997). "Too Much of a Good Thing – How much hype is overhype?". Slate.com. Retrieved March 10, 2006.
  55. ^ Graham Farmelo (2009). The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius. p. 89. ISBN 978-0-571-22286-5.
  56. ^ Sega Force, nr 1, 1994
  57. ^ Mike Mullane (2007). Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut. Scribner. ISBN 978-0-7432-7682-5.
  58. ^ "Illness". QI. Series I. Episode 9. London. November 4, 2011. BBC. BBC Two.
  59. ^ Pawle, Gerald (1957). The Secret War 1939–45. pp. 51–52.
  60. ^ Levy, Steven (2010). Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (25th Anniversary ed.). O'Reilly Media. p. 63. ISBN 978-1449393748. Retrieved September 25, 2020.
  61. ^ "Aalt.sysadmin.recovery FAQ v1.799999999999999998..." www.faqs.org.
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  63. ^ "Crackpot index". math.ucr.edu.
  64. ^ "The Quackometer Blog". The Quackometer.
  65. ^ Donk, Kelsey (December 9, 2019). "The Hawking Index Is a Mathematical Measure of When People Give Up on Books". Curiosity. Retrieved January 1, 2020.
  66. ^ Kovalic, John (May 21, 2009). "The Milliwheaton". Dork Tower. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
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  68. ^ "The Wheaton and Other Unusual Units of Measurement". www.mentalfloss.com. May 6, 2011.
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