The most interesting units of measurement involve mixing precise scientific formality with absurd references, cultural in-jokes or impractical scales. Our selection:
Beard-second
Playful unit of length. How much the average beard grows per second: ~ 5 nanometres
Bee’s Dick
Australian term for a very short distance. [Ed: Not so short, protests the bee.]
Canard
A unit of quackery created by blogger Andy Lewis in the need for a fractional index measuring pseudoscience. The scale is from 0 to 10, with 0 being “no quackery” and 10 being “complete quackery”.
Donkey power
This facetious engineering unit is defined as 250 watts – about a third of a horsepower.
Hand
This one is real. Measures the height of horses. One hand is equivalent to approximately 10 cm (4 inches).
Hawking Index
Invented by mathematician Jordan Ellenberg, the Hawking Index (HI) is the percentage of a book’s readers who will finish it. Books with a lower HI are less likely to be completed. It is named after Stephen Hawking, whose 1988 book A Brief History of Time scored only 6.6% on the scale.
Jiffy
Gilbert Newton Lewis (1875–1946) proposed in 1926 a unit of time called the “jiffy”, which was equal to the time it takes light to travel one centimetre in a vacuum: ~ 33.3564 picoseconds.
Minutes per Big Mac
Minutes per Big Mac refers to how many minutes one has to work in a country or region at minimum wage to afford one McDonalds Big Mac in that country or region.
Moment
A measurement of time used in medieval Europe: 1/40 of an hour = 1.5 minutes
New York second
The New York second is defined in Terry Pratchett’s novel Lords and Ladies (1992) as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind one honking.
Poronkusema
A unit of distance used in Finland to measure how far reindeer can walk before having to urinate: ~ 7.5–9.6 km. See also: Untranslatable Finnish Words [RR5:84]
Sagan
This tribute to Carl Sagan and his catchphrase “billions and billions” references a large quantity, technically at least 4 (2+2) billion.
Scaramucci
A Scaramucci (or Mooch) is 11 (sometimes 10) days and is named after the length of White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci’s tumultuous tenure under US President Donald Trump. Watch HERE or below.
Smoot
Defined as the height in 1958 of Oliver R. Smoot (MIT class of 1962). The Harvard Bridge was measured to be 364.4 Smoots using Smoot as a ruler. Google Earth includes the smoot as a unit of measurement.
Story Idea: David Astle
Video
REMORANDOM Chapter
References
So many great units to use in every day life. I recall fondly the Mooch. He would be a voice of reason today :-). I have to take issue with the graphic for measuring horses in hands. The hand should be rotated 90 degrees. A 4” long hand would be hard to find outside the average Prep Class.