36 Unusual Units of Measurement

Jason English
| Updated: Feb 21, 2020, 4:00 PM EST

gpointstudio/iStock via Getty Images / gpointstudio/iStock via Getty Images

When it comes to measurement, we have a lot of words that mean a

bunch of stuff or a bit of something, but many of those terms have
actual, specific meanings.

Let's learn about a whole barrel full of them.

1. A barrel changes depending on what's in it.

Niall MacTaggart/iStock via Getty Images

When you're talking about oil, a barrel is exactly 42 gallons. For beer, a
barrel is 31.5 gallons. For dry goods, it's 105 dry quarts. That last one
was defined by Congress in 1915.

2. A dash is part of a teaspoon.

:
 ma-no/iStock via Getty Images

Then there's the dash, as in, "just a dash of salt," which is between 1/16
and 1/8 of a teaspoon.

3. A pinch is part of a dash.

AnVr/iStock via Getty Images

A pinch is half a dash, or 1/16 of a teaspoon.

4. A Smidgen is a real thing.

Oksana Osypenko/iStock via Getty Images

It's a half of a pinch, or 1/32 of a teaspoon.

5. Pats of butter are 1/3 of an ounce.

Jupiterimages/iStock via Getty Images

Butter is packaged at 48 pats per pound, which means that each pat is
1/3 of an ounce or 1 tablespoon.

6. A drop is 1/480 of a fluid ounce.

ronstik iStock via Getty Images

Okay, to be more specific, it's .05 milliliters, which you probably already
knew if you're a pharmacist.
:
 7. Australians used to measure rain by points.

Animaflora/iStock via Getty Images

We don't measure rain by drops, but in Australia, they used to measure

rain by points. A point was .254 milliliters, so you might say, "We got a
hundred points of rain last night!," which sounds like a lot, but isn't.

8. The Jiffy is about 10 milliseconds.

crstrbrt/iStock via Getty Images

The jiffy is a unit of time used in computer engineering that has to do

with a computer's clock cycle. It's about 10 milliseconds. It means
something even faster in physics, where a jiffy is a unit of measurement
for the time it takes for light to travel a distance the size of a nucleus.

9. A Shake is 10 nanoseconds.

MartinLisner/iStock via Getty Images

Physicists also have the shake, which is used to measure nuclear

reactions. A shake takes 10 nanoseconds, or 10 billionths of a second,
so the next time you go somewhere for the weekend, you can tell
friends you'll be gone for 17,280,000,000,000 shakes.

10. A hogshead was 63 gallons.

Cannasue iStock via Getty Images

:
 Specifically, 63 gallons of wine. It's a term dating back to at least the
15th century, and it might be a corruption of the term hog's hide, which
might make clearer sense for referring to a wine container, but we really
don't know how the word came about. The casks are also repurposed
to mature whiskey.

11. You can have a double hogshead ...

Konev Timur/iStock via Getty Images

It's called a port pipe, and it holds about 145 gallons.

12. ... or a butt.

Jurkos/iStock via Getty Images

A butt holds about 132 gallons, so when someone tells you that they
drank a buttload last night, they are either lying or dead.

13. Megadeath is a unit of atomic bomb

destruction.

Alexyz3d/iStock via Getty Images

Megade(a)th is not just the third-greatest heavy metal band of all time.
It's also a terrifying unit of measurement. It was coined in the '50s as a
unit of atom bomb destruction. One megadeath is equal to one million
deaths.

14. A micromort measures the probability of

:
 death.

Terroa/iStock via Getty Images

On the other end of things, we've got the micromort, a unit for
measuring the statistical probability of death. One micromort is a one-
in-a-million chance of death. So, smoking 1.4 cigarettes, or spending
an hour in a coal mine increases your risk of death by precisely one
micromort. Going skydiving? Seven micromorts. They're the coolest
thing—and also the only cool thing—ever invented by actuaries.

15. manpower is about 1/10th as powerful as

horsepower.

mari_art iStock via Getty Images

So you've heard of horsepower, but did you know there's also a

measurable unit of manpower? It was worked out to somewhere
between 1/8 and a 1/10 of a unit of horsepower. Horsepower was based
on the fact that the average brewery horse could move something
weighing 330 pounds 100 feet in one minute, stop, and repeat for eight
hours. And it would take about eight to 10 men to do the same, so your
Camaro might have a 300 horsepower engine, but my Chevy Volt has
like a 2000 manpower engine.

16. A Darwin is, naturally, a unit of measuring

evolution.

dan_wrench/iStock via Getty Images

:
 We also measure things using the names of famous people. A Darwin,
for instance, is a special ratio for measuring the rate of evolution.
Evolution happening at the rate of one Darwin would change something
by a factor of about 2.7 over a million years.

17. A Gal measures gravitational acceleration.

Dharmapada Behera/iStock via Getty Images

A Galileo or Gal is a unit of measurement used by physicists to talk

about gravitational acceleration, but because there's only about a
seven Galileo difference between the lowest and highest possible
measurements on Earth, calculations are usually done in milli-Galileos.

18. Movements of your computer mouse are

measured in Mickeys.

Thailand Photographer./iStock via Getty Images

There's another guy you might have heard of who gave his name to a
unit of measurement having to do with your computer mouse. The
smallest detectable movement of a computer mouse—somewhere
around 1/10 of a millimeter—is called a Mickey.

19. A Half-million twitter followers is a wheaton.

Ridofranz/iStock via Getty Images

After half a million people followed Wil Wheaton on Twitter, John

Kovalic dubbed that number a Wheaton. The beloved actor and
:
 brewmaster got to about six Wheatons on the social site before
deactivating his account in 2018.

20. The Length of a Beard-SEcond is in dispute.

AaronAmat iStock via Getty Images

Speaking of great men with facial hair, a beard-second is the average

length a man's beard grows in one second, but beard growth experts
disagree on what that length actually is. Some say it's 10 nanometers.
Some say it's five. Some say, "I can't believe that we're spending our
time talking about this."

21. A millihelen is 1/1000th of one helen of troy.

Haris Krikelis/iStock via Getty Images

Helen of Troy's magnificent mug is said to have launched a thousand

ships, but what if there's just one ship that needs help getting out of
port? Then, you need a millihelen, the amount of beauty required to
launch a single ship.

22. A barleycorn is 1/3 of an inch.

id-art/iStock via Getty Images

A few hundred years ago in England, small objects were measured in

barleycorns, as in grains of barley. A barleycorn was a third of an inch,
which means it's barley there at all.
:
 23. A poppyseed is even smaller.

belchonock/iStock via Getty Images

If you needed something smaller than that, you could measure by

poppyseeds, defined as either 1/4 or 1/5 of a barleycorn. In fact, grain is
the basis of our whole system of terms for measuring weight.

24. A pound was 5400 or 6750 grains.

Markus Thoenen/iStock via Getty Images

The Roman forerunner to the pound was the libra, which is why the lb.
abbreviation stuck. Medieval England takes credit for using a pound
(5400 grains) to measure metals and a mercantile pound (6750 grains)
for goods.

25. A Bushel changes depending on the

foodstuff.

Abbie Velker/iStock via Getty Images

The USDA has assigned individual bushel measurements to different

things we grow in the ground. A bushel of corn is 56 pounds, while a
bushel of oats is 32 pounds.

26. A Span is 9 inches.

Rawpixel iStock via Getty Images

:
 A span isn't just a vague term for how long something is, like a bridge
or wings or the length of time you can pay attention to something. It
originally meant a distance of about 9 inches, or the width of a man's
hand with the fingers out.

27. A Hand is now 4 inches.

welcomia/iStock via Getty Images

Besides the span, we also have the hand, now mostly used for
measuring horse height. It's the width of your hand with the fingers
closed. But these days, it just means 4 inches no matter how gigantic
your hands are.

28. A Finger is the width of your finger.

artisteer/iStock via Getty Images

Noah Webster measured the breadth of a finger and nailed it down as

3/4 of an inch, but finger has been used a lot as a unit of measurement.
Thus, it's not always clear whether we're talking about the width of the
finger, like when your bartender pours you two fingers of booze.

29. A Finger can also be 4.5 inches of cloth.

GEOLEE/iStock via Getty Images

This unit uses the length of a finger as the basis.

30. A Nail is 1/16 of a yard.

:
 LightFieldStudios/iStock via Getty Images

A nail of cloth, which is based on the length of your finger from the nail
to the second joint, is half a finger, or 2.25 inches. That's also 1/16 of a
yard.

So, there you have it. There are about seven barleycorns in a nail, two
nails in a finger, four fingers on your hand, and three hands in a foot.

31. A Centipawn measures the value of chess

positions.

marchmeena29 iStock via Getty Images

And now let us discuss centipawns. Chess computer programs can

evaluate the value of a particular piece or position in terms of
hundredths of a pawn, or centipawns.

32. A Frigorie is a Calorie's nemesis.

AndreyPopov/iStock via Getty Images

You've heard of the boring old calorie, a unit that measures energy that
produces heat. A Big Mac, for instance, has 550 of them. But, what
about the energy to cool something? That unit of refrigeration is called
a frigorie, which fell out of use in the 1970s.

33. An Oxgang is about 15 acres.

:
 Philip Openshaw/iStock via Getty Images

Also lost to history is the oxgang, a unit for measuring the area of land
approximately equivalent to 15 acres—or the amount of land that a
farmer could plow with an ox in one season.

34. An Olf is a unit of odor.

Webkatrin001/iStock via Getty Images

Luckily, we've still got the melodious olf. Olfs are used for measuring
the air quality of indoor spaces, like offices. One olf is basically the
amount of odor of one standard person. So, what's a standard person?
The olf standard is a person with a skin area of 1.8 square meters, who
bathes 0.7 times per day, and is seated comfortably in a comfortable
temperature. If the person becomes slightly active, it rises to 5 olfs. A
heavy smoker gives off 25 olfs while smoking and six while not.

35. A QuasiHemidemisemiquaver is a unit of

brief musical time.

Furtseff/iStock via Getty Images

Also known as the 128th note, it lasts for 1/128 of a note. Nice how that
works. Beethoven and Bach were fans.

36. You can cut the Quasihemidemisemiquaver

in half.
The great news about music is that you can always go smaller: a
:
 demisemihemidemisemiquaver is a 256th note, and it's been used in
works by Beethoven and Mozart.

For more information on offbeat units of measurement, check out the

video below, hosted by John Green. You'll be measuring things by
fingers in a jiffy.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel here.

: