Odd Units of Measurement.

 Although it took a while for certain measurements to become standard and even some of the standard ones such as a stone can be a bit unusual.  A stone is 14 pounds and is the unit they used to weigh people in Australia but there are some other, really unusual units of measurement.  Most of the units I'm sharing are so unusual, I've never heard of them but they are still interesting.

1.  The Beard-Second is a unit of distance defined as the amount an average physicist's beard grows in one second.  This is about 5 nanometers and this particular unit got its inspiration from the light year.

2.  The Smoot is also a unit of distance.  It is defined as five feet and seven inches the same height as one Oliver R Smoot who in 1958 was a pledge at MIT.  His fraternity pledge was he be used as the base measure of the Harvard Bridge.  It was determined the Harvard Bridge is 364.4 Smoots tall give or take an ear.

3.  After investigating around 250 megaliths in Scotland and England, a scientist decided they were built using a standardized measurement. It was concluded the megalithic yard is equal to 0.9074 yards or 0.8297 meters.

4.  There is the Bloit, another distance measurement.  This distance found in the Zork games is used in the Great Underground Empire.  A Bloit is stated as the distance the King's favorite pet can run in one hour, or about 2/3 of a mile.

5. It is said they had a Pyramid inch back in Ancient Egypt which equaled one - twenty fifth (1/25) of a "sacred" cubit or about 1.00106 inches.

6.  Another unit of distance called the Sheppey or how close you can be for sheep to remain picturesque or about 7/8 mile.

7.  A Slug is an English unit of mass defined as mass that accelerates by 1 ft/sec^2 when a force of one pound force is exerted on it.

8.  The Barn - Megaparsec is a measure of volume or about 2/3 teaspoon.  The unit combines a barn which is an extremely small measurement used in nuclear physics and the megaparsec used to measure distance between galaxies.

9.  A Shake comes from "two shakes of a lamb's tail" or about 10 nanoseconds.

10. There is a jiffy coming from the computer field.  One jiffy is the length of one tick of the system timer interrupt or about 0.01 second.

11. Hobo Power is a unit coined to describe how bad something smells.  Hobo power ranges from 0 to 100 with 100 meaning the smell is so bad, you'd suffocate.

12. The Dol is used to describe the amount of pain.  It came about in the 1940's and 1950's and is based on "the justifiable difference in pain."

13. The Big Mac Index first coined by economists to describe purchasing power described in terms of the cost of a Big Mac.

14. Finally, the Nibble again comes from the computing field.  It is equal to 4 bits or half an 8 bit byte which fits one hexadecimal digit.

There are more but I thought these were cut and fun.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.