Download Unit Dimension Definition Metric Value

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UNUSUAL UNITS OF MEASUREMENT
I know that many of you think that our Imperial system of units is quite easy to use; that is, you know
how long a mile is, and you have a rough idea of feet and inches. And further, I know that many of you have
a slight disdain for – if not a burning hatred of – the metric system. You might think that it’s just for crazy
hippies, drug users, and Canadians. Well, mes petits chous, it’s not. It’s a lot easier to use than you might
think, and to show you that, check out these rather unusual systems of measurements that can be used. Try
doing some conversions using these units, and you’ll soon come to appreciate the simplicity of the metric
system!
I. The FFF system – This system is based on three units, the furlong, firkin, and the fortnight. It’s
completely confusing, so don’t even try and figure it out…or try to use any of the names as curse words…
Unit
Dimension
Definition
Metric Value
Furlong
Length
1/8 mile
201.168 m
Firkin
Mass
9 Imperial gallons of
water
40.91481 kg
Fortnight
Time
14 days
1,209,600 s
II. Weird hybrids – Many times, people don’t want to say “one-thousand” or “one-hundred-thousand,” so
they simply adopt metric prefixes and stick them on their old units, as below:
Kilofoot, microton, kilopound, grams per fluid ounce, deciinch, micopound, etc.
III. Strange measures of length – Not really scientific, but some people use them.
A. The Mickey – the smallest detectable movement of a computer mouse, about 0.1 mm.
B. Attoparsec – About 3 cm…a parsec is 308,500,000,000,000,000 cm.
C. Light-nanosecond – Distance light can travel in one nanosecond, which is about 30 cm.
IV. Odd measures of volume – Again, not terribly useful but fun to know.
A. Stère – one cubic meter, or one kiloliter.
B. Sydharb – The amount of water in Sydney Harbor, about 500 gigaliters.
C. Board Foot – 144 cubic inches, used to measure wood. 1 inch by 1 inch by 1 foot.
V. Just plain kooky
A. Jansky – a unit of electromagnetic flux
B. Foe – a unit of energy, equal to 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000 joules. A candy bar contains about 840,000 joules of energy.
C. Nibble – half of a byte, so four bits. A byte has 8 bits.
D. Scoville Heat Unit – to measure the hotness of peppers.
E. Dol – unit of pain. Each step is a “jnd,” or a “just noticeable difference” in the pain level.
F. Smoot – The height of Oliver Smoot, or 170.18 cm.