13 Strange Units of Measurement You’ll Never Learn in School
Most of us grew up memorizing inches, feet, pounds, and gallons. These standard measurements dominate our textbooks and daily lives, but they represent only a tiny fraction of humanity’s creative measuring systems.
Beyond the realm of conventional education lies a fascinating world of peculiar units that solve specific problems or simply add color to our quantitative conversations. Here is a list of 13 strange units of measurement that somehow never made it into your math or science curriculum, despite being genuinely useful or historically significant.
Micromort
This morbidly practical unit measures the probability of death. One micromort equals a one-in-a-million chance of dying.
Extreme activities rack up micromorts quickly – skydiving adds about 8 micromorts per jump, while running a marathon adds about 7. This unit helps put risk assessment into perspective, making abstract dangers more comparable and concrete.
Beard-Second
Funny measurement units are a favorite among scientists. A beard-second is the amount of length, or roughly 5 nanometers, that a normal beard grows in a single second.
This small unit turned out to be the light-year’s playful equivalent, demonstrating how even serious scientists can remain humorous when faced with intricate computations.
Smoot
In 1958, MIT fraternity members measured the Harvard Bridge using freshman Oliver Smoot as a human ruler. They laid him down repeatedly across the span, marking every ‘Smoot’ until they determined the bridge was exactly 364.4 Smoots plus one ear in length.
The markings have become so culturally significant that when the bridge was renovated, workers carefully preserved the Smoot measurements.
Barn
Physicists needed a unit to measure extremely small areas when studying atomic nuclei. They chose the ‘barn,’ equal to 10^-28 square meters, making it approximately the cross-sectional area of a uranium nucleus.
The name came from the expression ‘hitting the broad side of a barn’ – since the uranium nucleus was relatively easy to hit with particles compared to other targets.
Mickey
Computer mice track movement using a surprisingly specific unit. One ‘mickey’ equals the smallest detectable movement of your mouse, typically about 1/200th of an inch.
The precision of your mouse is often measured in dots per inch (DPI), which directly relates to how many mickeys it can detect when moved one inch across your desk.
Shake
Nuclear physicists operate in extraordinarily brief timeframes. A ‘shake’ equals 10 nanoseconds, derived from ‘just a shake of a lamb’s tail.’
During nuclear reactions, where chain events occur in billionths of a second, having a shorthand unit speeds up communication. Within two shakes, light travels just shy of 20 feet – a substantial distance in atomic physics.
Donkeypower
Everyone knows horsepower, but its lesser-known cousin ‘donkeypower’ measures about one-third of a horsepower. This unit originated from the need to measure smaller engines and mechanical outputs where using horsepower resulted in awkward fractions.
A typical riding lawnmower might generate around 5–7 donkeypower, making it a more elegant description than saying ‘2 horsepower.’
Helen
This tongue-in-cheek unit measures beauty – specifically, the amount of beauty needed to launch a single ship. Named after Helen of Troy, whose face ‘launched a thousand ships’ according to legend.
Therefore, one millihelen is enough beauty to launch a single ship. The unit showcases how even subjective qualities can be humorously quantified with the right reference point.
Jiffy
Though colloquially used to mean ‘a short time,’ a jiffy has actual scientific definitions depending on the field. In electronics, a jiffy equals the time between alternating current power cycles (1/60th or 1/50th of a second).
Computer scientists define it as the time between system timer interrupts, while physicists sometimes use it to mean the time light takes to travel one centimeter (about 33.3 picoseconds).
Warhol
Andy Warhol’s well-known quote that everyone enjoys their “15 minutes of fame” is the source of this measure of fame. Metrics like megaWarhols (long-lasting celebrity) and microWarhols (short-lived viral moments) are possible since one “Warhol” is equivalent to fifteen minutes of global fame.
This unit is occasionally used in jest by social media specialists to highlight how internet celebrities are evolving so quickly.
Nibble
Computer scientists needed something between bits and bytes. The solution? A ‘nibble’ – a unit representing exactly 4 bits or half a byte.
This unit proves particularly useful when discussing hexadecimal notation, where each digit requires exactly one nibble of storage. Network engineers often reference nibbles when troubleshooting data transmission issues.
Megafonzie
This unusual unit measures coolness, with one ‘fonzie’ being the amount of coolness embodied by Arthur Fonzarelli from Happy Days. The megafonzie sees occasional use in pop culture discussions and internet forums.
It allows for semi-serious debates about the relative coolness of various celebrities or fictional characters. By definition, the Fonz himself rates exactly one Fonzie.
Moot
A ‘moot’ measures the time spent discussing an issue after it’s become irrelevant. Computer programmers coined this term after noticing how teams often continued debating problems long after decisions had been finalized.
A standard moot equals approximately one hour of wasted discussion time, with major project planning sessions sometimes generating several moot hours of unproductive conversation.
The Practical Impact of Unusual Measurements
These strange units remind us that measurement systems arise from human needs and cultural contexts, not just scientific precision. While you won’t find micromorts or megafonzies in standardized testing, they serve genuine purposes in specialized fields.
They demonstrate how quantification evolves naturally when existing systems don’t quite fit the task at hand. The next time you measure something ordinary, remember there’s probably an extraordinary unit waiting to be discovered – or perhaps even invented by you.
After all, today’s oddity could become tomorrow’s standard if it proves genuinely useful in helping us make sense of our complex world.
More from Go2Tutors!
- The Romanov Crown Jewels and Their Tragic Fate
- 13 Historical Mysteries That Science Still Can’t Solve
- Famous Hoaxes That Fooled the World for Years
- 15 Child Stars with Tragic Adult Lives
- 16 Famous Jewelry Pieces in History
Like Go2Tutors’s content? Follow us on MSN.
