- This is a sub-article to List of unusual units of measurement
Many comedians and humour writers have made use of, or invented, units of measurement intended primarily for their humour value. This is a list of such units invented by sources that are notable for reasons other than having made the unit itself, and of units that are widely known in the anglophone world for their humour value.
Contents |
Conventional
These units may or may not have precise objectively measurable values, but all of them measure quantities that have been defined within the S.I. system of units.
Length
Potrzebie
Donald Knuth's first professionally published article was "The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures", which included the Potrzebie as its base unit of length.[1] See entry at Potrzebie for full details.
Smoot
The smoot is a unit of length, defined as the height of Oliver R. Smoot who, fittingly, is a former president of the ISO. The unit is used to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge. Canonically, and originally, in 1958 when Smoot was a Lambda Chi Alpha pledge at MIT (class of 1962), the bridge was measured using Mr. Smoot himself as a ruler (his height being 67 inches or 170.18 cm[2]), turning him end-over-end for the 364.4 (plus one ear) -smoot length of the bridge. Google Earth software includes the smoot as a measurement unit.
Sheppey
A measure of distance equal to about 7/8 of a mile, defined as the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque. The Sheppey is the creation of Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, included in The Meaning of Liff, their dictionary of objects for which no name exists. [3] It is named after the Isle of Sheppey in the UK.
Spatial volume
Barn-megaparsec
This unit is similar in concept to the attoparsec, combining very large and small scales. A barn (b) is a unit of cross-sectional area used in nuclear physics, equal to 10-28 m². The effective area for interaction of the nucleus of an atom is on the order of magnitude of the barn —a very small unit of area (itself humorously named after the proverbial "broad side of a barn"). When this is multiplied by the megaparsec (Mpc) - a very large unit of length - the result is a human-scaled unit of volume approximately equal to 2/3 of a teaspoon (about 3.0857 ml).
Bottlesworth
This unit is approximately equal to a standard bottle of Champagne (0.75 litres), and is designed to allow the use of wine in scientific experiments in the science comedy Look Around You.
Power
Donkeypower
This facetious engineering unit is defined as about a third of a horsepower (i.e., 250 watts).[4]
Non-Conventional
These units describe dimensions which are not and can not be covered by the S.I system of units.
Sound Intensity: Phon
The unit of perceived loudness, phon, is sometimes also called phone. This has led to puns such as One megaphone equals 1012 microphones. While the phon is a real unit, this intentional misspelling, phone, exists solely for the humour value.
Beauty: Helen
Helen of Troy (from the Iliad) is widely known as "the face that launched a thousand ships." Thus, 1 millihelen is the amount of beauty needed to launch a single ship. According to The Rebel Angels, a novel by Robertson Davies, this system was invented by Cambridge mathematician W.A.H. Rushton. However, the term was possibly first suggested by Isaac Asimov.[5] The obvious reference is Marlowe's line from the play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships...?" [6] Negative values have also been observed—these, of course, are measured by the number of ships sunk or the number of clocks stopped. An alternative interpretation of 1 negative Helen is the amount of negative beauty (i.e. ugliness) that can launch one thousand ships the other way.
Bogosity: Lenat
The unit of bogosity, derived from the fictional field of Quantum Bogodynamics, the lenat is seldom used, as it is understood that it is too large for normal conversation. Its most common form is the microlenat.[7]
Coolness: MegaFonzie
A MegaFonzie is a fictional unit of measurement of an object's coolness invented by Professor Farnsworth in the Futurama episode, Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV. A 'Fonzie' is about the amount of coolness inherent in the Happy Days character Fonzie.[1] [2]
Happiness: Happy
The unit of happiness, coined by Dave Gorman in his television series Dave Gorman's Important Astrology Experiment. One happy is equal to how much happier you feel if someone gives you a pound coin, which is supposed to be equivalent to how much less happy they feel upon relinquishing it. However, this definition seems to fall foul of the law of diminishing marginal utility, which states that the more you have, the less you benefit from having even more. In other words, a penniless beggar will gain appreciably from being given a pound, whereas to a millionaire, the donation is trivial. Some might also point out that calling this unit "happy" is totally unnecessary, as it could be as well called "pound".
Happiness: Puppy
Lucy van Pelt is credited in the Peanuts to have discovered the axiom happiness is a warm puppy. The proposed SI unit of happiness, puppy, is derivable as the quantity of happiness which one 1 kilogram beagle puppy whose body temperature is 310 kelvins produces when held in skin contact for one second.
Incompetence: Pikotuki
Equal to 1/1000 of a nanotuki, or 0.0288 seconds of competent systems support. Likewise originally an inside joke at Nokia Research Center; pikotukihenkilö means "grossly incompetent person assigned in systems support". Also equal to one millionth of a mikrotuki, and used to describe work done by a grossly incompetent work force.
Magical Energy: Thaum
The Thaum is a measuring unit used in the Terry Pratchett series of Discworld novels to quantify magic. It equals the amount of mystical energy required to conjure up one small white pigeon, or three normal-sized billiard balls. It can, of course, be measured with a thaumometer, and regular SI-modifiers apply (e.g. millithaum, kilothaum). [8] A thaumometer looks like a black cube with a dial on one side. A standard one is good for up to a million thaums - if there is more magic than that around, measuring it should not be your primary concern. Please do not mistake with the subatomic magical particle thaum from the same series of novels.
Pleasure: Hedon
Philosophers talking about Jeremy Bentham's Utilitarianism sometimes use the conceptual unit of the Hedon to describe the amount of pleasure, equivalent to the amount of pleasure a person receives from gaining one util of utility. [9]
Seating comfort: Pinkwater
A notional unit of seating comfort; it can be used to describe both the width of a seat, or the width of a seat which a person needs to be comfortable in. Named for writer and book reviewer Daniel Pinkwater, it was coined by 'Click and Clack', the hosts of the Car Talk radio show. Reputedly, a 1.0 pinkwater seat would be pretty comfortable - most car seats are 0.7 pinkwaters. There was also some discussion of using the pinkwater as a measure of acoustic range - defined by the chord produced by a 1.0 pinkwater person sitting on a piano keyboard.
Smell: Hobo Power
Hobo Power is a unit coined by Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew on the radio show Loveline as a measure of how bad something smells. Some noted reference points include:
- 0 hobo — Doesn't smell bad at all
- 13 hobo - "A robust fart"
- 50 hobo — The smeller must vomit. Carolla also suggested the hypothetical: "50 hobo power is a cat that's been fed nothing but blue cheese for a week defecating on a white-hot hibachi."
- 100 hobo — Purely theoretical (comparable to absolute zero). Near 100 hobo would cause death by asphyxiation.
A running section of The Adam Carolla Show involves callers relating foul-smelling situations for which the hosts then determine the equivalent Hobo Power.
References
- ^ Mad Magazine #33, June 1957
- ^ smoot. The Jargon File (version 4.4.7). Retrieved on 2006-06-27.
- ^ The Meaning of Liff, Douglas Adams and John Lloyd , 1984. IBSN 0-51755-347-3
- ^ Rowlett's Dictionary of Units. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.
- ^ Isaac Asimov
- ^ http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/drfsta10.txt
- ^ The Original Hacker's Dictionary. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.
- ^ Prachett, Terry (1998). The Last Continent. Doubleday London. ISBN ISBN 0-385-40989-3.
- ^ EG, "Utilitarianism and the Wrongness of Killing", Richard G. Henson, The Philosophical Review Vol. 80, No. 3 (Jul., 1971), pp. 320-337.
