I thought I'd find a few oddly named measurements
By patootie
@patootie (3592)
January 15, 2007 2:58pm CST
Have you ever wondered about all the weird and wonderful names that measurements have been given over the years ... intrigued once about why we say 'I'll be there in a jiffy' I started doing some research .. and these are just a few or the really odd sounding names I found ...
I'll start with my favourite ... 'jiffy'
Light travels 1862.82 miles in a JIFFY
Apothecaries must have wanted to make themselves extra important as they have invented their own measuring system .. 20 MINIMS = 1 FLUID SCRUPLE .. 3 FLUID SCRUPLES = 1 FLUID DRACHM .. 8 FLUID DRACHMS = 1 FLUID OUNCE ... and of course 20 FLUID OUNCES = 1 PINT ... they even have their own weight system too ... 20 GRAINS = 1 SCRUPLE .. 3 SCRUPLES = 1 DRACHM ... 8 DRACHMS = 1 OUNCE ... 12 OUNCES = 1 POUND
In America 1 SQUARE MILE = 1 SECTION and 26 SECTIONS = a TOWNSHIP
We all know a FURLONG is 220 YARDS ... but did you know that 22 YARDS = 1 CHAIN .. and so there are 10 CHAINS in a FURLONG
PASCAL is a measurement of pressure and is equal to 1 NEWTON per SQUARE METRE or 1 KILOGRAM per METRE per SECOND per SECOND
PHON is a logarithmic measure of sound
PHOT is the CGS unit of illuminance or illumination and is equal to 1 LUMEN per SQUARE CENTIMETRE or 10,000 LUX
1 LUX is defined as an illumination of 1 LUMEN per SQUARE METRE or .0001 PHOT
KIP is an old unit of force and equal to 1000 pound-force
JANSKY a unit used in radio astronomy to measure the flux density of radio signals from space
HORSEPOWER James Watt worked out that 1 horse is capable of a power rate of 550 foot pounds per second ... 1 horsepower is equal to approx 746 watts
NEPER is the ratio of two numbers as a natural logarithm
STOKE is a CGS unit of kinematic viscosity
BARN a unit of area used in nuclear physics ..
PLANCK is a unit of distance representing the scale at which gravity becomes quantized (quantization is the procedure of constraining something to a discrete set of values)
HARTREE a unit of energy used in nuclear physics
MOLE is the SI base unit of the amount of a substance
Good grief and there are literally hundreds of equally obscure or daft sounding measurements .. many of course are named after the person who discovered the measurement and so gave it their name ..
2 responses
@wolfie34 (26771)
• United Kingdom
15 Jan 07
A scruple! Haven't got many of those upstairs! Heard of some of them, do they still use furlongs in horseracing now? Or was that outlawed with all the other imperial or ex imperial measures? You definitely should use this info to get yourself on tv Toots!
@thejoot (70)
•
15 Jan 07
The only ones I've heard of on that list are Jiffy and Horsepower- you learn a new thing every day I guess.
I wonder if there's anybody on earth who actually uses phrases such as "Planck" and "Lumen" in their everyday vocabulary... I know that "jiffy" is a pretty common phrase in the UK, so perhaps there are some nationalities where certain words are used more than others?
Thanks for the entertaining post.