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As part of my professional life, I teach subjects in mechanical engineering and machining trades. During one of the pandemic lockdowns, I was running a class on metrology, the science of measurement, and for a humourous lesson, I started showing weird measurements that are recognized, so using "banana for scale" I hope everyone gets as much laughter and confusion as my students did.

#1

Banana For Scale

Banana For Scale

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a banana is at least 7 inches, or 177.8 millimeters, but no longer than 8 inches, or 203.2 millimeters.

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    #2

    Beard-Second - 5 Nanometres

    Beard-Second - 5 Nanometres

    Inspired by the light-year but defined as the length an average physicist's beard grows in one second.

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    #3

    Mickey - 0.1mm

    Mickey - 0.1mm

    The smallest detectable movement was registered by a computer mouse and was named after Mickey Mouse.

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    #4

    Pyramid Inch - 1.00106" Or 25.426924mm

    Pyramid Inch - 1.00106" Or 25.426924mm

    This unit of measurement has been determined by Pyramidologists as being 1/25 of the sacred measurement the Cubit.

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    #5

    Shake - 10 Nanoseconds

    Shake - 10 Nanoseconds

    This dandy was developed by nuclear engineers and astrophysicists from the old saying "two shakes of a lamb's tail".

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    Michael Smith
    Community Member
    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    By my calculation, that would mean that a lamb's tail shakes at nearly half the speed of light

    #6

    Banana - 78 Nanosieverts

    Banana - 78 Nanosieverts

    Once again our friend the banana is utilized. This time the unit of measurement is the severity of radiation one might be exposed to.

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    #7

    Smoot - 67" Or 1.70m

    Smoot - 67" Or 1.70m

    This distance was developed based on the height of Oliver Smoot, a Harvard fraternity pledge in 1958. The fraternity used Oliver to measure the Harvard Bridge. It worked out to be 364.4 Smoots +/- one ear. Oliver Smoot would later become the chairman at ANSI and president of ISO. Both organizations are responsible for standardizing measurements and engineering.

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    #8

    Jiffy - 0.01 Seconds

    Jiffy - 0.01 Seconds

    The jiffy was designated from the world of computers. The allocated time is the duration of one tick of the system's timer interrupt. Earlier computers, like 8-bit Commodores, had a jiffy at 1/60 of a second.

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    #9

    Warhol - 15 Minutes

    Warhol - 15 Minutes

    This measurement is owing its origin to Andy Warhol who stated "everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes".

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    Michael Smith
    Community Member
    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I heard fifteen minutes is the average.. of course some people are famous most of their lives and many are never famous.

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    #10

    Nibble - 4-Bits

    Nibble - 4-Bits

    The nibble is half of an 8-bit byte, which is 1 hexadecimal digit.

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    #11

    Big Mac Index

    Big Mac Index

    The magazine, The Economist, came up with this oddball measurement which compares nations purchasing power parity to the cost of a Big Mac hamburger.

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    Michael Smith
    Community Member
    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Which allowed the Hamburgler to pull off the heist of a century via interest rate swaps by manipulating international burger prices, similar to the LIBOR scandal except that the Hamburgler got away with it because nobody ever suspected a thing.

    #12

    Sagan - 4 Billion

    Sagan - 4 Billion

    A humourous tribute to Carl Sagan and the phrase "billions and billions" that he was often known to say. So a Sagan is used to describe a large amount, with 4 billion as the accepted minimum.

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    #13

    Micro-Century - 52 Minutes 35.7 Seconds

    Micro-Century - 52 Minutes 35.7 Seconds

    This is attributed to mathematician John von Neumann. This is the maximum length of a lecture, which also works out to be one-millionth of a century.

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    #14

    Garn - Level Of Incapacitation Due To Nausea

    Garn - Level Of Incapacitation Due To Nausea

    NASA developed this measurement to register the amount of nausea and motion sickness related to space travel. Jake Garn, a NASA astronaut, was known to become sick during tests and when in orbit with great frequency. The value of one Garn means the person is basically incapacitated.

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    #15

    Rictus - Level Of Media Coverage

    Rictus - Level Of Media Coverage

    Tom Weller, the author of Science Made Stupid, coined this term as a parody of the Richter scale for earthquakes. His "Rictus" scale, which measures from 1 thru 5, is designed to measure the amount of media coverage an event garners.

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    #16

    Megalithic Yard - 0.9074 Yards Or 0.8297 Metres

    Megalithic Yard - 0.9074 Yards Or 0.8297 Metres

    Scottish professor of engineering, Alexander Thom, concluded this measurement was the common unit used after analyzing over 250 megalithic sites in England and Scotland.

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    #17

    Furman - 1/65536 Of A Circle

    Furman - 1/65536 Of A Circle

    This is named after mathematician Alan T. Furman who adapted the CORDIC algorithm for 16-bit fixed point arithmetic.

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    #18

    Barn-Megaparsec - 2/3 Teaspoon Or 3.33ml

    Barn-Megaparsec - 2/3 Teaspoon Or 3.33ml

    This is the combination of the Barn (b) used in nuclear physics and the megaparsec (Mpc) which is used to measure the distance between galaxies.

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    #19

    Barn - 1.0×10−28 M2

    Barn - 1.0×10−28 M2

    Developed by nuclear physicists in reference to "you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn" when discussing the probability of the collision of particles in an accelerator.

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    Lawrencium
    Community Member
    1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Is that 10 to the negative 28th power per meter squared? The title format makes it confusing.