You might say to yourself once reading the title of this thread "But luis, what the hell is the point of this?" Well, as an engineering major I run across units of measurement that sound so ludicrous and made up that it's a feat of wonder that the scientific community has adopted them in the S.I. system.

But my two favorites are inductance, which is measured in Henry's and then conductance, which is measured in Siemens (which is pronounced in a way as to make me do a double take in lecture). Henry's just sounds goofy, and I honestly thought Siemens was an accent error - my professor is from Cyprus - until I saw the word spelled out.

So I want to hear some of your favorite units of measurement. They could be something from science, popular science fiction, or even something your friends have adopted as slang. Extra credit goes to topics that someone can look up on wikipedia and go "wow, I thought he was joking, but siemens is a real unit."

I think one of the NASA teams on the Mars lander that became a Mars penetrator was using furlongs per fortnight - that's always been my favorite unit of measurement. Beyond that, one unit of pressure is the Pascal. Light on a surface can be measured in foot-candles, literally the amount of light striking a surface one foot away from a standard candle. And of course fathoms are rather humerous, at least to me.

Gotta be the Henry

Even before I read more than the headline of this thread, I thought "Furlong. Definitely furlong." There's just something about that word -- mouthfeel? arcane ridiculousness? The fact that no one knows what it is? -- that makes people snigger.

As a chemist I feel obligated to say the 'Mole'... If you don't know what it actually is, it sounds ridiculous when people start talking about measurements in little brown furry creatures...

"Hogshead." It's just so archaic, yet so descriptive. At a close second place, "league" because it just sounds so steampunk-y.

-- Steve

I'll represent my nautical brethren and say the "fathom." Such an ominous and foreboding word when used in the right context.

A fathom is 72 inches btw, that's 1.8288 meters for all you people who don't use the king's measurements.

The Tesla. Magnetinc flux density ftw, man.

facepalms/second^2
Good indicator of where a game/thread/sexual encounter is going.

But seriously, my favorite measurements are measurements of data storage, particularly crumbs and nibbles. Even the occasional dword.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit#More_than_one_bit
Wikipedia article for the people who think I just made those words up :)

Theres an old Russian measurement called a pood equal to about 16 kilograms

The English unit of mass is the slug, I always thought that was retarded

..but my "favorite" unit of measurement has to be the pound-mass and pound-force combo. Our professor messed up the conversion like 5 times while explaining it to us and just ended up throwing the whole concept out of the class.

I'm still not entirely sure which is which.. but I honestly don't care either!

Giraffes per fortnight.

I'd pay good money to have my speedometer in my car converted to this measurement.

Cochranes, named after the creator of Warp Drive, Zefram Cochrane.

Hertz, i dunno why I just like it...hertz-y

Sidenote - I'll probably forget this in a few days so if you ask me again I'm likely to say something different haha

The Vietnamese currency is the Dong.

i do like the mark twain

tho i still remember one time talking with an american about the metric system and she said "i have no clue how the metric system works you have all these different names for stuff" and i go "well it goes in factors of 10 so 10 mm is 1 cm, 100 cm is 1 m, 1000m is 1 k and so forth" and she responded with "yeah that's confusing", to which i responded "well better than 12 inches is a foot, 3 feet makes a yard, 1760 yards make a mile for distance and that's on land nautical it's different and it's also a totally different system for weight, the metric system at least has the same names and increments for each type of measurement" she sadly didn't have a reply to that beyond "well the metric system is confusing"

cleverlymadeup:
i do like the mark twain

tho i still remember one time talking with an american about the metric system and she said "i have no clue how the metric system works you have all these different names for stuff" and i go "well it goes in factors of 10 so 10 mm is 1 cm, 100 cm is 1 m, 1000m is 1 k and so forth" and she responded with "yeah that's confusing", to which i responded "well better than 12 inches is a foot, 3 feet makes a yard, 1760 yards make a mile for distance and that's on land nautical it's different and it's also a totally different system for weight, the metric system at least has the same names and increments for each type of measurement" she sadly didn't have a reply to that beyond "well the metric system is confusing"

Yeah, I've never figured out why the metric system is considered confusing. It works pretty well, actually.

As an engineer, I obviously love me some metric system. It's the only logical system of measurements out there.

Joeshie:
As an engineer, I obviously love me some metric system. It's the only logical system of measurements out there.

Seconded. Imperial is weird. But in saying that I'm just asking for trouble. :/

Joeshie:
As an engineer, I obviously love me some metric system. It's the only logical system of measurements out there.

The metric system is a lot easier and more logical than Imperial, it's just that we Americans were raised on it and are a bit resistant to other ideas. If something is different, it's automatically considered "difficult" merely because we don't want to bother learning it.

Edit: We also have the same problem with languages, where everyone is convinced that all other peoples should learn English, instead of taking the time to learn to speak a new language.

I <3 the metric system

Joeshie:
As an engineer, I obviously love me some metric system. It's the only logical system of measurements out there.

Hear hear. I want to shoot someone every time I hear the word *mil*....

Imperial is only good if whatever you're getting comes in pints.

Mainly beer.

My favourite measurement is a "fuckload"

Im not sure how much one is, but I like it.

MichaelH:
Even before I read more than the headline of this thread, I thought "Furlong. Definitely furlong." There's just something about that word -- mouthfeel? arcane ridiculousness? The fact that no one knows what it is? -- that makes people snigger.

That's actually a pretty handy unit for describing anything done with the aid of a mule or horse.

Likewise, rods are also a great unit for conversion to metric; almost exactly 5 metres. Can't understand why we stopped teaching them.

MRMIdAS2k:
Imperial is only good if whatever you're getting comes in pints.

Mainly beer.

My favourite measurement is a "fuckload"

Im not sure how much one is, but I like it.

Ironic. Our bootleggers seem to prefer 2 litter bottles, 16 gram bags and 7.62mm rifles. :P

cleverlymadeup:
i do like the mark twain

By far one of the best literary psuedonyms and metaphors out there. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain's real name) used to work on River Boats. There was a precise depth, I wanna say it was twelve feet, where the river boat was nuetral. It could become too shallow and wreck or it could open up and become safe, so that mark twain meant you were right on the edge. That's what he picked it as his pen name.

Knot for speed, Leagues for Distance, and Fathoms for Depth... (1 Knot = 1 nautical mile per hour, League is 3 Nautical miles, And a Fathom is Six Feet, from back before they were called feet...)

Yeah, I am a sailor, can you tell...

And as a car guy my favorites are Pound/Feet (Torque) and Horsepower (Rolls off the tongue a hell of a lot better than Newton/meters. Sorry guys...if we DO switch to metric, I hope we keep Horsepower...)

Rabid Toilet:

Joeshie:
As an engineer, I obviously love me some metric system. It's the only logical system of measurements out there.

The metric system is a lot easier and more logical than Imperial, it's just that we Americans were raised on it and are a bit resistant to other ideas. If something is different, it's automatically considered "difficult" merely because we don't want to bother learning it.

Edit: We also have the same problem with languages, where everyone is convinced that all other peoples should learn English, instead of taking the time to learn to speak a new language.

In all fairness, Great Britain made English the universal trade language long before our country was ever dreamt up... We just don't want to change it. Hell, 3/4 of the world speaks English, why SHOULD that change? (Not as a primary language, but it is the primary language of Aviation, and most scientific words in other languages are slight changes of their english counterpart, if they even bother to change the spelling...)

I know this is going to sound weird to all of you Brits and Aussies on here, but I like "stone" as a measurement of weight. It just sounds cool, like, medieval-y or something.

EDIT: I just wiki'd it, and 1 stone = 14 pounds, if anybody is wondering.

ThaBenMan:
I know this is going to sound weird to all of you Brits and Aussies on here, but I like "stone" as a measurement of weight. It just sounds cool, like, medieval-y or something.

EDIT: I just wiki'd it, and 1 stone = 14 pounds, if anybody is wondering.

Actually, I was going to say this and I am a Brit. It always reminds me of AC/DC's 'Whole Lotta Rosie' which is probably one of their funniest songs.

Lukeje:
As a chemist I feel obligated to say the 'Mole'... If you don't know what it actually is, it sounds ridiculous when people start talking about measurements in little brown furry creatures...

a quick trip back to memory lane tells me a mole is about 6.023 * 10^23 of anything. but then again, I hated chem so another quick trip to wikipedia says a mole is 6.02214×10^23 of anything, be it atoms, giraffes, molecules, hookers, etc.

And on the subject of metric/imperial it's just old school British colonialism at work. Hell, most of the world still goes by Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), but others use Universal Time (UT). Having the British change, or even the Americans, is pretty futile, so get used to having to convert slugs to grams. Oh, and don't even get me started on why BTUs (British Thermal Units) are the worst unit ever.

MRMIdAS2k:
My favourite measurement is a "fuckload"

Im not sure how much one is, but I like it.

A Fuckload is ten Metric Shitloads... Seven and a half Imperial Shitloads, DAMN I hate Imperial.

Imperial vs Metric, if you don't work in the wood industry you don't have nearly as much hatred towards Imperial as I do.

Wood is bought and sold on what is called a Board Measure or Board Foot (same thing). A board foot is a 3-dimensional figure of 1" thick by 12" wide, by 12" long. Thus a 1' 2x6 is one board foot, as is a 1' 1x12 or 1/2' 2x12, etc... Doesn't sound so bad, aside from it all being imperial which is fucking insane to begin with. Here's where it gets fun...

On an imperial count, NOTHING is what it measures. a 2x6 is actually 1 1/2" x 4 1/4". You PAY for it based on it being 2" by 6", but you loose quite a bit in thickness and width. 1" wood is actually 3/4" thick, 2" is 1 1/2" thick. 4" wide is really 3 1/2", 6" is 4 1/4", and 8" is 7". If I needed a piece of wood that was actually 2" thick, and as a normal consumer not knowing this stuff, went and bought a 2x4 then brought it home and found it was a half inch shy, I'd fucking beat someone with the board until they dragged me out a 2" thick plank.

Now here's where it gets even MORE fun. Metric measured lumber is EXACT to what you order. 25mm x 105mm wood IS 25x105. The Fuck?!!

Warp speed due it's hilarious inconsistancies. According to the entire plot line of Star Trek: Voyager, it'd take them 75 years to get home at top speed, then they list that top speed at 4 billion kilometers per second. At that speed, it'd only take them 3 years to get home, and no, I did not figure this out. The legwork was already done for me. I never would've noticed this on my own, or cared for that matter.

Simply amazing what you can find when you're not looking for it.

The metric system never failed me.

Then again, i never jumped from one Rooftop to another or something...