# Coolest units of measurement **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 21, 2013, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542 "2013-06-21T06:35:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/21 "2013-06-21T18:09:13Z")
**Kilogram**. It is the only fundamental SI unit that uses a prefix. And I \*believe \*it is also the only fundamental SI unit that is based on a physical artifact. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/22 "2013-06-21T18:21:55Z")
I still like the **Parsec**. I originally laughed at Han Solo’s “mistake,” then I realised he was from a long ways away and he said that a long time ago. So, it obviously means something else to him. I think **Picosecond** should be changed to **Picard-second**. Being the amount of time needed to decide on Tea! Earl Grey! Hot! whilst pondering beverage choices. ---
**Author:** ![Slypork](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc29f/32.png) [@Slypork](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slypork)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/23 "2013-06-21T18:35:09Z")
[Banana equivalent dose](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose) - “additional dose a person will absorb from eating one banana.” Sunshine unit, now called the [Strontium unit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strontium_unit) - a measurement of nuclear radiation. ---
**Author:** ![Slypork](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc29f/32.png) [@Slypork](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slypork)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/24 "2013-06-21T18:38:41Z")
> [@NoClueBoy](#): > > I still like the **Parsec**. I originally laughed at Han Solo’s “mistake,” then I realised he was from a long ways away and he said that a long time ago. So, it obviously means something else to him. Sorry, but according to [Wookieepedia](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kessel_Run): > [@](#): > > The Kessel Run was one of the most heavily used smuggling routes in the Galactic Empire.[3] Han Solo claimed that his Millennium Falcon “made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs”. A parsec is a unit of distance, not time. Solo was not referring directly to his ship’s speed when he made this claim. Instead, he was referring to the shorter route he was able to travel by skirting the nearby Maw black hole cluster, thus making the run in under the standard distance. By moving closer to the black holes, Solo managed to cut the distance down to about 11.5 parsecs.[source?] The smuggler, BoShek, actually beat Solo’s record in his ship, Infinity, but without cargo to weigh him down. A few months later, Han Solo beat both his own and BoShek’s records in a run he made with Luke Skywalker.[2] ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/25 "2013-06-21T18:43:37Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > Single-digit kelvins. Good point. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/26 "2013-06-21T18:45:15Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > [Jiffy (physics).](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiffy_%28time%29#Physics) A jiffy, as defined by Edward R. Harrison, is the time it takes light to travel one fermi (one femtometer), which is about the size of a proton. > > [Smoot.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot) The smoot is a unit of length created by a bunch of (probably drunk) MIT students in 1958. The unit is named after George Smoot, and was used to measure the lenght of the Harvard Bridge. One smoot is equal to George Smoot’s height at the time (five feet and seven inches). To measure the length of the bridge, Smoot repeatedly lay down on the bridge, allowed his fraternity brothers to mark his position, and got up again. The bridge was measured as “364.4 smoots plus or minus one ear”. The markings on the bridge are still there, as they are repainted each semester. Appropriately, George Smoot later served as Chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and President of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). > > Got any others? Smoot’s son attended MIT as well, and I think went to the same frat, so they repeated the experiment with him. By the way, the markings at the end of the bridge read “364.4 Smoots plus one ear”, which confused me for many years, until I learned that it’s supposed to be “plus _or minus_ one ear.” a real unit with an interesting history is the **barn** , a unit of atomic cross-section, which apparently owes its name to the uranium atom being “as big as a barn”, along with the idea of “hitting the broad side of a barn”. see here: [Barn (unit) - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_(unit)) and for weirdly-named units, as I’ve said before, you can’t beat radiometry and photometry, which give us: **Candle Foot-Candle Candela Stilb Phot Lux Lumen** ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/27 "2013-06-21T18:45:25Z")
> [@Slypork](#): > > Sorry, but according to [Wookieepedia](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kessel_Run): 🆒 Yeah, I had seen that before today, thanks. I was speaking of when I first saw it on opening day in theaters. I still think my 14 yr old self came up with a better explanation than that offered by the gill breathing War-iers on that site. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/28 "2013-06-21T21:03:35Z")
I should have thought of this before, but Rhode Island is commonly used as a comparative measure of the size of large sections of ice that break off from the polar ice sheets, as well as for measuring wildfires and other areas of concern. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/29 "2013-06-21T21:05:12Z")
An asteroid the size of Texas. From some movie … ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/30 "2013-06-21T21:46:01Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I should have thought of this before, but Rhode Island is commonly used as a comparative measure of the size of large sections of ice that break off from the polar ice sheets, as well as for measuring wildfires and other areas of concern. When I lived out in Utah there was a newspaper column complaining about this practice, which it blamed on Folks Back East. It said something along the lines of “People always compare thingsto the size of Rhode Island, which gets Western folk upset because the fire/iceberg/meteor/whatever is the size of an Entire State. What they forget is that there are _counties_ in the Intermountain West bigger than the “state” pf Rhode Island, so this is causing unnecessary worrying.” Now that I live back in the Northeast, nobody mentions this. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/31 "2013-06-21T22:05:53Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > “…What they forget is that there are _counties_ in the Intermountain West bigger than the “state” pf Rhode Island…” In Texas, from what I hear, there are \*living rooms \*bigger than Rhode Island. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/32 "2013-06-21T22:10:49Z")
[Centons](http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Centon): either a minute or 100 microns, depending on what you need to measure. Maybe more, if the writers are lazy enough. ---
**Author:** ![deltasigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/33 "2013-06-21T22:15:23Z")
The Shitload. It’s a dynamic unit that is larger than a bunch but smaller than a metric shit-ton. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/34 "2013-06-21T22:20:40Z")
> [@deltasigma](#): > > The Shitload. It’s a dynamic unit that is larger than a bunch but smaller than a metric shit-ton. Shitload is also used in a vector quantity, such as a “fuckin’ shitload”. I believe the SI unit is fS. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/35 "2013-06-21T22:34:14Z")
[Kilonazis](http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0489.html)\*: A measurement of evil. - Bottom row, middle panel ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/36 "2013-06-21T23:29:06Z")
Back when I was doing graphics, we had a client who always wanted something moved over “just a _ **scosh** _” (rhymes with gauche). I think it was somewhere between a “hair” and a “smidgen.” And speaking of hairs, there was the _ **RCH** _, or “red cunt hair,” supposedly the smallest distance perceivable. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/37 "2013-06-21T23:48:14Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Back when I was doing graphics, we had a client who always wanted something moved over “just a _ **scosh** _” (rhymes with gauche). I think it was somewhere between a “hair” and a “smidgen.” > > And speaking of hairs, there was the _ **RCH** _, or “red cunt hair,” supposedly the smallest distance perceivable. _Scosh_ or _skosh_ is a unit that GIs returning from Japan brought back with them. It’s from Japanese _sukoshi_, meaning “a little bit” > **[Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/skosh)** > > The world's leading online dictionary: English definitions, synonyms, word origins, example sentences, word games, and more. A trusted authority for 25+ years! I had to explain what “RCH” meant to my boss a couple of months ago. Acording to _Playboy_, the more letters you add, the smaller the unit, as in RBCH for “Red or Black” or RBBCH for “Red, Black, or Blonde”. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/38 "2013-06-21T23:50:22Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > And speaking of hairs, there was the _ **RCH** _, or “red cunt hair,” supposedly the smallest distance perceivable. Hah! My friends and I used to have a similar unit, except that the hair in question was blonde, not red. I still use that sometimes by force of habit, although I try to watch myself in polite company. It is especially appropriate for very close shaves, like “holy shit, that runaway steamroller missed me by _one…_ (etc).” Edit: Going by **CalMeacham** ’s post as well, it’s apparently in common use. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/39 "2013-06-21T23:58:19Z")
> [@](#): > > The slug is a unit of mass associated with Imperial units. It is a mass that accelerates by 1 ft/s2 when a force of one pound-force (lbF) is exerted on it. – [Slug (unit) - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slug_(mass)) It may not be ‘cool’ but it was very funny to a bunch of high school physics geeks. ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2013, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542/40 "2013-06-22T00:01:23Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > _Scosh_ or _skosh_ is a unit that GIs returning from Japan brought back with them. It’s from Japanese _sukoshi_, meaning “a little bit” > > [SKOSH Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/skosh) > > I had to explain what “RCH” meant to my boss a couple of months ago. Acording to _Playboy_, the more letters you add, the smaller the unit, as in RBCH for “Red or Black” or RBBCH for “Red, Black, or Blonde”. My red-headed fiancee assure me that red hair is the thickest the three standard hair colors. I am not a fool and have no desire to gainsay her on this. She says she has empirical data to support her assertion. I believe an experimentation phase should be done by another scientist, namely me. I will report after this weekend. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coolest-units-of-measurement/661542.md?page=3)