Metes and Bounds, used to measure and describe parcels of land.
Can still be found on property deeds that go back a ways in New England, a leftover from Colonial times.
" Beginning at a heap os stones and post, set in the road leading from Johnathan Athearns to Edgarton, so called, thence Southerly till it comes to a tree and a heap of stones in the fence of John Williams, thence by the fence of said Williams till it comes to a pair of bars in said fence leading from Watchy Neck to the corners of the land belong inf formerly to John Norton… etc"
Apparently a different breed of surveyor back in the day. The guys I’ve known never would have made it past the first bar, much less the pair
I rather like the “Hitler” as a unit of evil measurement—one Microhitler being equal to six dead people (I, personally, would have calculated it at at least twelve deaths, but perhaps that’s an issue for the BIPM people to decide). it also has a handy dollars-to-Picohitlers calculator available, to more precisely calculate how evil an overcharge is.
Although, Hitler himself is probably several kilonazis of evil: One assumes that “kilonazis” are based on the average member of the Nazi party, and Hitler was considerably above that average.
The Miner’s Inch, really a measure of rate of flow of water, with at least 5 defined values.
How long is a Line? 1/12 of an inch (but not a Miner’s Inch).
I’ve heard about some rancho legal descriptions giving a boundary distance in ‘smokes’, the distance one might ride a horse while enjoying a cigar, or whatever.
And just to push another one along: Rhode Island is 1,214 square miles, including water. San Bernardino County in California is 20,105 square miles - damned little water. One SBC = 16.56 RIs.
A somewhat related measure, but more in the vein of engineering than physics.
The shake: approximately 10 nanoseconds. The interval between success generations of neutron-nucleus collisions in a nuclear fission chain reaction. In other words, the time required for a neutron liberated by the fission of one nucleus to cause the fissioning of the next neutron in the chain reaction. Purportedly, from the idiom “two shakes of a lamb’s tail.” Apparently first used in the Manhattan Project. Those whimsical nuclear weapons guys.
Technically, the bogon is the elementary particle of bogosity in the field of quantum bogodynamics. The Lenat is the unit of bogosity in that same discipline. Named for some a moderately reknowned computer scientist who offended the coiner of the phrase. By consensus, a full Lenat is too high a quantity to use in any context of bogosity other than describing its namesake, so in most usages bogosity is measured in microLenats.
Per the quantum bogodynamics article cited 1 Lenat consists of 1 mole of bogons.
No one has mentioned sizes of champagne bottles - ranging from the Piccolo to the Melchizedek with stops at Jennie, Jeroboam, Rehoboam, Methuselah, Mordechai, Salmanazar and Balthazar.
Checking wikipedia, Rhode Island= 1,214 sq mi (though this pagethinks it is 1,545 sq mi). Houston, Texas, is 627.8 sq mi, which is just about half of Rhode Island.
The principle at work in that description seems to be in being able to tell the two colors apart. So being able to differentiate red from black is smaller than being red or black. If it is smaller still, you can’t tell if it is red, black, or blonde - that’s very fine.
But the principle that is illustrated by the Playboy article I read is completely different – using more letters to indicate finer grade. It seems to resemble the practice of using more letters to indicate better grades of cognac – VS to VSO to VSOP – which I suspect more of the folks who read Playboy would have been familiar with. The idea of fineness going with different colors seems too logical for this sort of usage.
The barleycorn is one I just like the sound of. If you Brits and Americans ever wondered what unit shoe sizes are measured in.
Learned of it on QI, I did.
