21 Surprising Things That Have Their Own Units of Measurement

Guess what the ‘pood’ is
21 Surprising Things That Have Their Own Units of Measurement

Back in school, you had to learn all kinds of measurements: imperial, metric, kelvin, simon, theodore, etc. Even if you breezed through fifth-grade science, though, you probably can’t estimate today how many millimeters a bookshelf is or the weight of a penny. The chances are pretty good that you can only measure baking ingredients, your penis, and nothing else.

Well, buckle up, because there’s a whole world of measurement out there far beyond what you’ve forgotten. Nevermind imperial and metric — we’re talking completely different systems and sometimes entire metrics invented wholecloth to measure things you had no idea could be measured, let alone by their own unit. 

We can speak from experience. Because when user the_real_coinboy66 asked r/AskReddit, “What’s an obscure unit of measurement and how is it used?” the answers blew our minds.

Stockholm-Syndrom 7y ago Poronkusema. It is the distance a reindeer can walk without having to pee.
Tisroc 7y ago The pood is a measure of weight that was used in Russia and is now only used for kettlebells.
pankocrunch 7y ago Sheppey: the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque. About 7/8 of a mile (1.4 km).
CatheterCOwb0y 7y ago There is a hand measurement which is used to measure the height of horses
StarbuckPirate 7y ago Hogshead used to measure liquids. Yes, I'd like a Hogshead of your finest Ale, please...
PM_ME_A_PLANE_TICKET 7y ago Beardsecond. Unit of distance, how far a man's beard grows in one second.
smilodon142 7y ago One Cuil = One level of abstraction away from the reality of a situation. Example: You ask me for a Hamburger. 1 Cuil: if you asked me for a hamburger, and I gave you a raccoon. 2 Cuils: If you asked me for a hamburger, but it turns out I don't really exist. Where I was originally standing, a picture of a hamburger rests on the ground. 3 Cuils: You awake as a hamburger. You start screaming only to have special sauce fly from your lips. The world is in sepia. 4 Cuils: Why are we speaking
TNTCookies- 7y ago Edited 6y ago A Micromort. A unit of risk defined as one-in-a-million chance of death. This is used surprisingly commonly to express danger. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort
crappycrap84 7y ago A jo. It's the standard areal measurement used in Japan for apartment/ room sizes. It's basically equivalent to the area of a tatami mat. The catch is that the size tatami mats differ from region to region and has also changed across time.
BLMdidHarambe 7y ago A cord. Used for wood, mainly firewood. It's actually a very specific thing and there are harsh penalties throughout the US for selling a cord of firewood that isn't a well packed cord.
Jeygo 7y ago Edited 7y ago The Barleycorn, a third of an inch and used to measure shoe sizes. A size 7 is a barleycorn bigger than a size 6.
FelixWFox 7y ago The banana equivalent dose (BED). It's the dose of ionizing radiation received from the radioactive isotopes of potassium in one banana.
FranklintheTMNT 7y ago Whi A barn is a measurement of probability equal to 10 e-24 cm2. It's used to determine the likelihood of an atomic to subatomic particle colliding with an atom or other subatomic particle, and trigger a nuclear or similar size level reaction.
loony123 7y ago Edited 7y ago Just remembering via Sam O'Nella Academy (great channel), the Waffle House Index. It's used, I think by FEMA, to measure how bad a disaster is. Forgot the specific names, but there's basically the normal Waffle House menu (things are looking alright), the disaster- preparedness menu (crap's going down out there), and being closed (apocalypse and/or annihilation conditions).
ponylover666 7y ago I like the DALY short for Disability-adjusted life year. It is used to measure medical outcomes and compare them to one another. Lets say you have the chance to save 20 kids from going blind or heal 500 retirees from prostate cancer. How do you decide what to do? Easy Find out how many DALYs each patient would gain, multiply by patient number and voila.
Braxo 7y ago A Pirate Ninja is defined as one kilowatt hour per Martian day. Written by Andy Weir in his novel The Martian, actually now used and referenced by JPL's mars rover teams.
Andromeda321 7y ago Radio astronomer here! Let me all tell you about the jansky (Jy), which we use in absolutely everything in radio astronomy but you never hear of otherwise. It's basically a unit of spectral flux density, aka how bright a radio source is in the sky. It's named after Karl Jansky, a radio astronomy pioneer, which means if you have more than one jansky it's janskys instead of janskies, which always seemed odd to me.
DLS3141 7y ago Gradians - a measure of angle where there are 400 gradians to one revolution. (Not to be confused with radians where there are 2*pi radians per revolution). Unless you're a surveyor or in the French artillery, you've probably never used the gradian, unless you accidentally set your scientific calculator to 'gradian' mode and took a physics midterm... That didn't go so well.
Ardaz 7y ago A Morgen. It was was approximately the amount of land tillable by one man behind an ох in the morning hours of a day. This was an official unit of measurement in South Africa until the 1970s.
stagehog81 7y ago There is a unit of measurement for liquids called a 'butt'. The 'butt' was a measure of liquid volume equaling two hogsheads or half of a tun. This equated to 108 imperial gallons (490 I) for ale or 126 imperial gallons (570 I) for wine (also known as a pipe), although the Oxford English Dictionary notes that these standards were not always precisely adhered to
pwrwisdomcourage 7y ago Edited 7y ago Smoots! The legend goes Smoot was an MIT student who had forgotten to do his semester project and was blackout drunk at his frat house. The project was to invent and use a new unit of measurement. His frat buddies decided to help out by rolling him head-over-foot down the Harvard bridge in Boston, MA. The fraternity frequently goes to re-mark the bridge with it's units in smoots, including 69 as smoot heaven and a few other marks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot For those curious, the bridge is 364.4 smoots plus or minus an ear.

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