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atomicthumbs posted:sorry but they've got nothing on TONS OF REFRIGERATION At least that unit had a point at one time. It described roughly how many tons of ice per day the air conditioning unit would be equivalent to in cooling capacity. Just like how horsepower roughly described how many horses a motor would be equivalent to.
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May 9, 2016 13:39
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Board-feet! Beard-seconds! Banana equivalent dose! Crabs, erlangs, Wiffleball Assisted Measurement (WAM), Garns... Sometimes you need to measure something, and you choose a weird rear end method of doing it.
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May 9, 2016 13:41
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One of my favorite Wikipedia articles: List of humorous units of measurement Which includes the length unit Smoot, defined as the height of Oliver R. Smoot during his time at MIT (1.7018 meters or 5.5833 feet). After his studies, Mr Smoot very suitably went on to be chairman of the American National Standards Institute and later president of the International Organisation of Standards. 
Collateral Damage has a new favorite as of 14:55 on May 9, 2016 |
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May 9, 2016 13:46
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Collateral Damage posted:One of my favorite Wikipedia articles: It makes me so happy that the barn is not only enough of a joke to make that list, but also useful enough that it sees tons of real-life use.
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May 9, 2016 13:48
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Collateral Damage posted:One of my favorite Wikipedia articles: I wish I knew about this back at uni, we had a pretty cool physics prof who would have approved of the usage of some of these. Computer viking posted:Ah, but that's where you get into the insane maze that is "lower bohemian pounds" and "Swedish miles" and so on. Liters/mil makes no goddamn sense for anyone not norwegian, I just use L/100km or mpg depending on who I talk to. On a more  note, swedes use "mil" for mileage on their cars, not km. Go look at blocket.se for an example.Going on a road trip in the US in 2007, I tried to convert poo poo from miles to km etc for a little while, then I just gave up. When in Rome and all that.
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May 9, 2016 14:51
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Liters/mil is at least easy to convert to Liters/100km. 
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May 9, 2016 15:01
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My favourite weird unit is Hertz/dioptre. Frequency per optical power makes no physical sense, but as Hz = s^-1 and dpt = m^-1, Hz/dpt is mathematically equivalent to meters per second.
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May 9, 2016 17:42
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It was only relatively recently I came across "Inches of Mercury" as a measurement of pressure. "What the gently caress is this poo poo? Why wouldn't you just use PSI, pascals, or even atmospheres!?"
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May 9, 2016 19:05
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The_White_Crane posted:It was only relatively recently I came across "Inches of Mercury" as a measurement of pressure. Blood pressure is measured in mmHg. A lot of local weather stations still report barometric pressure in inHg too, I think.
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May 9, 2016 19:27
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The_White_Crane posted:It was only relatively recently I came across "Inches of Mercury" as a measurement of pressure. I still can't figure out why the boost gage on my rental car's display shows psi for positive values and inHg for negative values.
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May 9, 2016 19:38
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Phanatic posted:I still can't figure out why the boost gage on my rental car's display shows psi for positive values and inHg for negative values. If it's negative you need to break open a thermometer and add that many inches of mercury
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May 9, 2016 19:50
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Phanatic posted:I still can't figure out why the boost gage on my rental car's display shows psi for positive values and inHg for negative values. Historical artifact. Manometers filled with mercury were standard for measuring vacuum, while gauges calibrated in psi were used for boilers.
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May 9, 2016 19:52
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Phanatic posted:I still can't figure out why the boost gage on my rental car's display shows psi for positive values and inHg for negative values. The_White_Crane posted:It was only relatively recently I came across "Inches of Mercury" as a measurement of pressure. In the case of vacuum measurements in imperial, you only ever have 15psi to work with, so using inHg instead doubles the whole numbers available over the entire range of vacuum and saves some brain power trying to reckon what number of sig figs is correct. Torr is a little harder to justify in that way, its mostly a historical thing because any rich noble interested in science could build a mercury barometer in their workshop and instantly understand and report things in relation to millimeter of mercury. You also get very practical engineering units like in or ft of water. Very useful in that if you want to move water up 20 ft, you know you need a differential pressure of 20ft of water plus pipe losses.
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May 9, 2016 19:59
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zedprime posted:You also get very practical engineering units like in or ft of water. Very useful in that if you want to move water up 20 ft, you know you need a differential pressure of 20ft of water plus pipe losses. Exactly. I use in of water (using my magnehelic gauge(s)!) to verify air flows in auto applications. Very handy when trying to determine air scoop/cowl efficiency.
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May 9, 2016 21:06
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I was looking through file headers of some astronomical data I was working with and it was calibrated using "nanomaggies". I don't remember if it was flux, or counts, or anything like that but nobody had any idea what the gently caress a "nanomaggie" was.
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May 9, 2016 21:11
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Some asshats are posting this around the internet: Reminds me of the old 4chan post about making crystals with ammonia and bleach.
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May 9, 2016 22:07
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The most confusing unit I've encountered at work is the British Thermal Unit, BTU, worth roughly 1055 Joules. Multiples of it are the MBTU (which are a thousand BTUs), and the MMBTU (which are a million BTUs).
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May 9, 2016 22:16
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Gann Jerrod posted:Some asshats are posting this around the internet: Feel the bern, indeed. What a bunch of sickos.
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May 9, 2016 22:20
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Royal W posted:Blood pressure is measured in mmHg. A lot of local weather stations still report barometric pressure in inHg too, I think. “Inches of water” is still used by U.S. pulmonologists. Default Settings posted:The most confusing unit I've encountered at work is the British Thermal Unit, BTU, worth roughly 1055 Joules. The worst part is that more often than not, it’s implicitly BTU per hour, but just called “BTU”.
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May 9, 2016 22:31
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Platystemon posted:“Inches of water” is still used by U.S. pulmonologists. These are also in high usage in the world of boilers, most notably when you work for a company making the burners that go on them. "WC and MBTU are things I see every drat day.
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May 9, 2016 22:40
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I worked at a US power plant with primary pressures in psi and condenser pressure in in Hg. However... I worked at a Swedish power plant where the reactor pressure was in MPa, the turbine was in bar, the condenser was in Pa, and the cooling water pumps were in m W.C.. At least the kilowatt isn't a unit of electrical energy in Sweden... :-/
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May 9, 2016 23:13
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At a certain point in WC or in Hg is way too specific. The physics of centrifugal pumps for example allow reporting of pump specifications in just feet of head. Feet of head of what? Doesn't matter. Feet of pudding, if you want a pudding pump. But go ahead and use your 100 ft of pudding pump with water and it'll give you 100 ft of water instead.
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May 9, 2016 23:26
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zedprime posted:At a certain point in WC or in Hg is way too specific. The physics of centrifugal pumps for example allow reporting of pump specifications in just feet of head. Feet of head of what? Doesn't matter. Feet of pudding, if you want a pudding pump. But go ahead and use your 100 ft of pudding pump with water and it'll give you 100 ft of water instead. There's just some things you'll never get.
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May 9, 2016 23:39
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zedprime posted:At a certain point in WC or in Hg is way too specific. The physics of centrifugal pumps for example allow reporting of pump specifications in just feet of head. Feet of head of what? Doesn't matter. Feet of pudding, if you want a pudding pump. But go ahead and use your 100 ft of pudding pump with water and it'll give you 100 ft of water instead. Pressure generated by sucking one foot of dick?
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May 10, 2016 00:31
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Gann Jerrod posted:Some asshats are posting this around the internet: Man, Correct The Record is getting savage.
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May 10, 2016 00:36
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zedprime posted:At a certain point in WC or in Hg is way too specific. The physics of centrifugal pumps for example allow reporting of pump specifications in just feet of head. Feet of head of what? Doesn't matter. Feet of pudding, if you want a pudding pump. But go ahead and use your 100 ft of pudding pump with water and it'll give you 100 ft of water instead. pudding pump is a term straight out of a pornhub video title
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May 10, 2016 01:44
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Moist von Lipwig posted:pudding pump is a term straight out of a pornhub video title
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May 10, 2016 02:12
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Unitchat - I know it's not the actual usage of it, and this is more of an artifact of repeating names, but: Water freezes at approximately π/6 radians Fahrenheit.
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May 10, 2016 05:25
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Metric was cool because all the units relate together but nobody loving uses the prefixes outside of kilo (or none), so now it's just as nonsensical as imperial. Sometimes the small prefixes come into play, but it's rare. Why is a long flight 6000 kilometers? It's 6 megameters. Pluto is 7.5 terameters away. A 747-800 weighs 0.408 gigagrams.
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May 10, 2016 05:34
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Hremsfeld posted:Unitchat - I know it's not the actual usage of it, and this is more of an artifact of repeating names, but: Water freezes at approximately π/6 radians Fahrenheit. i can't wait for the metric kevin bacon game, 0.10472 radians to Kevin Bacon insta posted:Metric was cool because all the units relate together but nobody loving uses the prefixes outside of kilo (or none), so now it's just as nonsensical as imperial. Sometimes the small prefixes come into play, but it's rare. stuff gets standardized because people have some conception of how big that unit is. kinda like how aviation still uses feet no matter how high you go, so it's 42,000 feet and not 8 miles. (although the granularity plays into that, too; 500 feet is a lot easier to conseptualize than .1524 km.) Kilograms are still dumb though for having the base unit have a prefix.
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May 10, 2016 05:41
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insta posted:Metric was cool because all the units relate together but nobody loving uses the prefixes outside of kilo (or none), so now it's just as nonsensical as imperial. Sometimes the small prefixes come into play, but it's rare. The tiny ones like micro, nano, pico, and femto are useful in various scientific fields.
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May 10, 2016 05:43
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Applying metric prefixes to imperial measurement is a good pursuit. I live in a 45 milliacre house, and my commute is 14.8 kiloyards.
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May 10, 2016 05:50
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blugu64 posted:Applying metric prefixes to imperial measurement is a good pursuit. I live in a 45 milliacre house, and my commute is 14.8 kiloyards. You put it like that and it sounds like you're living in a shoe box.
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May 10, 2016 05:53
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DemeaninDemon posted:The tiny ones like micro, nano, pico, and femto are useful in various scientific fields. You see some of the larger prefixes in electrical contexts. Megawatts, and gigawatts for power generation and consumption, Megavolts, Gigavolts, and even Teravolts in particle accelerators. You also see Megaohms, and occasionally Gigaohms in electronic contexts. Enourmo posted:Kilograms are still dumb though for having the base unit have a prefix. The mass we now know as the kilogram was originally called the "Grave." There was some discussion early on if the Grave or the Gravet (1/1000 of a Grave, or a modern gram) would be more convenient for commonly weighed things. Both have their advantages, for example, you'd probably want to weigh a person in graves, but ingredients of your food in gravets. Why don't we call the units a milligrave or a kilogravet? Well, the word grave is also a noble title; and the metric units was standardized under the watchful eye of the French Revolution, who didn't look to kindly on royalty or nobility. So they definitely needed a new name for their new metric system. Eventually the gravet side won out, and they renamed the resulting unit to gramme. This may been helped out by the fact that gravet could be also be read as as tiny noble, in addition to tiny mass, so using the resulting unit would always be a (not so) subtle dig at nobility. After some use, it turned out that the gram wasn't really the right size either, so they went back to 1000x larger, and called it the kilogram.
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May 10, 2016 07:09
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insta posted:Metric was cool because all the units relate together but nobody loving uses the prefixes outside of kilo (or none), so now it's just as nonsensical as imperial. Sometimes the small prefixes come into play, but it's rare. In common use it doesn't matter what units you use. You could use rods and hogsheads and furlongs or whatever. SI really shines in science and engineering though. Especially because you don't have to deal with BTUs and you have the only electrical units anyone uses anymore.
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May 10, 2016 07:47
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A White Guy posted:Lol if you're not measuring your reactants via 'ocular survey'. Dust is hardcore. If you get it fine enough, say, using sawdust, you can literally run jet engines on wood and air.
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May 10, 2016 10:51
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YggiDee posted:There's no way he'd donate that flask to Value Village, it's probably enshrined somewhere. One homestuck ago. Let's start measuring velocities in smoots per homestuck, it's not totally useless at all!
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May 10, 2016 11:09
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https://imgur.com/gallery/iDOzAa5
DocCynical has a new favorite as of 14:56 on May 10, 2016 |
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May 10, 2016 14:54
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DemeaninDemon posted:The tiny ones like micro, nano, pico, and femto are useful in various scientific fields. Bits of encouragement are given in attoboys (and attogirls).
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May 10, 2016 15:08
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Deteriorata posted:Bits of encouragement are given in attoboys (and attogirls). 
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May 10, 2016 15:20
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