Humans have a need to measure things . And sometimes the usual measurements — animal foot , beat , grams — are not estimable enough . Or peculiar enough . Sometimes you need to evince things in bananas , Helens , or cattle .
Image credit : Standard Measures by Neil Cummings / flickr / CC BY - SA 2.0
There are almost as many different ways to measure things as there are people — even once you obviate ones that had the same name but were passing varying . Beyond thegarn and the beard - secondment , here are ten unit think to make things easier that do n’t really seem to really help .
Bananas by Ian Ransley / flickr / CC BY 2.0
How do you convey , to an everage person , radiation therapy exposure ? Bananas . The Banana Equivalent Dose ( BED ) is .1 microsievert , approximately the eq of the dose you ’d get from the of course go on radioactive isotopes in a single banana . Another way to reckon about it as that one banana tree equals 1 % of your middling radiation therapy vulnerability . You could double how much radiation you ’re let on to in a day by eat 100 bananas ( 100 BED ) . Do not do that .
If Helen of Troy was the “ face to launch a thousand ships , ” then the Helen is the amount of dish required to do so . A millihelen is botha beauty and style web log , and the exact amount of stunner expect to set in motion just one ancient Greek ship . If you ’re wonder about the relative ability of the other Helen differential , David Goines hasgot you covered .
cow by Global Panarama / flickr / CC BY - SA 2.0
For farmers , the actual size of a battlefield was much less important than its utility in substantiate cows . Ireland once used “ a moo-cow ’s grass ” as a unit of measurement — that is , the amount of land needed for one cow . In America , the “ mother moo-cow forefinger ” determined how many pregnant cows an acre of demesne could support . As react to size , it was a quality measurement .
Like the foot or the carat , the barley was named for — and initially meant to equal — the size of an factual matter . In this case , a corn of barley . It was standardized to 1/3 of an in and is still in use as the base for shoe size in Great Britain and Ireland . One barley is the difference between each size . One fourth of a barley is a poppyseed .
Sydney Harbor Bridge by Nigel Howe / flickr / CC BY 2.0
As Belgium , Wales , France , and Texas are all used as units of terra firma sizing , the Sydharb ( or Sydarb ) is a whole of water supply . evidently , this is in enjoyment in Australia as the name is a portmanteau word of Sydney Harbor .
The sensitivity of computing machine mice is evaluate in Mick per inch — Mickey Mouse , get it ? It ’s the duration of the smallest detectable movement of a computer mouse — usually between 1/200 and 1/300 of an inch .
This unit was named for New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and describes “ the next six months . ” As in “ the next 6th months are critical ” or “ the next 6th months will be the last . ” The use of a Friedman Unit is almost always followed by another Friedman Unit . The soubriquet came about after an article by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting showed that Friedman used the “ the next six months ” as determining the final result of the Iraq War at least fourteen times in a two and half year period . As a tribute , blogger Atrios strike the “ Friedman Unit ” for “ 6th months . ”
The Morgen — Dutch and German for morning — is the orbit that can be tilled by a single person behind a single oxen “ in the break of the day minute . ” Hence the name . And , as the name implies , it was used in Germany , the Netherlands , Poland , and Dutch colonies . Depending on your location , the Morgen was equal to anywhere between 2,000 to 12,000 square meters . presumptively , the latter areas had more productive men and oxen . The Morgen was still in use in South Africa until the seventies and is still in habit in Taiwan , where it ’s ring the “ kah . ”
Physicist Paul Dirac was n’t the most talkative man in the world . As a final result , his colleagues created the Dirac unit — which equaled one word per hour . Because that ’s the sort of joke scientist screw . It ’s also called “ the Dirac social unit of shyness . ”
2025-03-26 – His Hand by Jlhopgood / flickr / CC BY - ND 2.0
If we have the infantry , why not the bridge player ? Using a clenched fist or the largeness of a hand as a unit of measurement goes back to Ancient Egypt . Using the part of the dead body we most often hold up to things to determine their size makes a long ton of horse sense . King Henry VIII in 1541 tried to standardise the bridge player to four inch , but the use of fists , handsbreadths , and hands confused the issue . These days , the four - column inch hand is still used to evaluate the height of Equus caballus , which is very confusing for laypeople trying to understand how tall a horse is . Especially since buck heights are n’t from the hoof to the ear but to the withers — the highest part of a horse ’s back .
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