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Unconventional units of measurement

3rd May 2013

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy

  

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On the Internet, you will find unconven- tional units of measurement.

These include the furlong per fortnight. One furlong per fortnight is very nearly 1 cm/min (to within 1 part in 400). The speed of light may be expressed as being roughly 1.8 terafurlongs per fortnight.

The beard-second, another unconven- tional unit of measurement, is a unit of length inspired by the light year, but used for very short distances, such as those in nuclear physics.

The beard-second is defined as the length an average beard grows in one second. Kemp Bennet Kolb defines the distance as exactly 100 angstroms.

Helen of Troy (from The Illiad) is widely known as ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’. Thus, one milli-Helen is the amount of beauty needed to launch a single ship.

Book II of The Illiad describes the ships and commanders who came to fight for Helen and notes that a total of 1 186 ships came to fight the Trojan War. Thus, Helen herself has a beauty rating of 1.186 Helens, thus capable of launching more than 1 000 ships.

I am very interested in units of measurement – it is a sort of hobby. What fascinates me is their derivation and the revision of traditional units to metric ones with the mess that follows.

Fascinating derivations are the unit for the measurement of precious stones (the carat) and the unit for the measurement of crude oil (the barrel).

‘Carob’ is a seed from the carob tree, and the carob seed weighs the same as any other given carob seed. In time, the carob seed became the standard unit of weight for gems. The word ‘carob’ itself comes from the Arabic word for the carob seed, the quirat, which became what we know today as the carat. The current metric carat measurement is 200 mg. The carat also features in Machoy’s Equation of Unnoticed Ugliness, or MEUU. ‘Ugliness’ is measured in inverse Biebers (or Inbiebers). Thus, a person who is ten times worse looking than Justin Bieber has an ugliness rating of 10 inbiebers. The MEUU relationship is that, for every carat (of diamonds, naturally) lavished on a lady with a beauty of x Helens, the perceived ugliness of a man diminishes by 2 Inbiebers.

The deviation of the barrel for crude oil volume measurements can be found on the Internet, where the following tale is told: “In the US and Canada, an oil barrel is defined as 42 US gallons. The origins of the 42-gallon oil barrel are obscure, but . . . early oil producers in Pennsylvania came to the conclusion that shipping oil in a variety of containers was causing buyer distrust. They decided they needed a standard unit of measure to convince buyers that they were getting a fair volume for their money. They agreed to base this measure on the 40-gallon whiskey barrel, but, as an additional way of assuring buyer confidence, they added an additional two gallons to ensure that any measurement errors would always be in the buyer’s favour.”

This is a yarn. What actually happened was that, when tankers were first used for shipping, the US oil companies charged for ‘evaporation and shrinkage’ so that the promised number of barrels (in volume) was always less than the buyer expected. After one such shipment, a British buyer complained that no amount of evaporation and shrinkage could account for the discrepancy and that there must be a shortage. Nope, said the US firm, which sent an agent to find the smallest barrel in use in Britain. The agent located a herring barrel, which has a capacity of 38 US gallons. This, the firm said, was the standard barrel measurement in the US. And, with four gallons added for ‘evaporation and shrinkage’, this is what it became.

The revision of traditional units to metric ones – what can I say? The British pound had 20 shillings. Each shilling was 12 pennies and each penny could be spilt into four. You thus had a currency which was divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and so on. The metric system, which replaced it, gave a currency divisible by only 2 and 5. Call this clever? I don’t.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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