What is the last unit of measurement you learned, when and why?

[Timsup2nothin]

I often wonder about this too, although usually not in the context of units, more in the general sense of what it means to say "I know this". The best answer I can come up with is that most things you learn about have multiple different aspects to them so it isn't really a matter of "I know this" or "I don't know this". Its more a matter of "How well do I know this" which is a function of if you know about all the different aspects of whatever it is.

In the case of units, I assume a basic understanding would be the name of the unit, what it measures (volume, mass, etc.), and it's relation to other common units you already know about. For a deeper understanding you could go into the historical origins, intuition (is this about 10 pounds or 20 pounds?), official standards, etc.

We need someone to set a standard for purposes of this thread then.

I would, but I can't think of an appropriate unit for the measurement.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Wait, gotta look that up.

Dude, six stone is only 84 pounds...38 kilograms. They are only fat if they are like three feet tall.

Garden Gnome Obesity is no laughing matter!

 

[Gori the Grey]

A dram.

If you buy Laphroaig Scotch they give you an offer where you can claim a square foot of their bog. If you ever visit the Isle of Islay, they tell you you can claim your rent on that square foot of land, which is a dram of scotch.

Turns out to be not very much.

 

[BenitoChavez]

@Broken_Erika You and your garden gnomes...

 

[warpus]

Wait, gotta look that up.

Dude, six stone is only 84 pounds...38 kilograms. They are only fat if they are like three feet tall.

Hahahaha which is probably people shouldn't be using stones when describing their weight to people not from the UK. Which probably almost never happens anyway

We have giant stones in Canada btw. Yuge. Stones in the UK must be tiny

 

[Broken_Erika]

@Broken_Erika You and your garden gnomes...

Try googling evil garden gnomes sometime, it's amazing what kind of lawn ornaments you can buy on teh internetz!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Hahahaha which is probably people shouldn't be using stones when describing their weight to people not from the UK. Which probably almost never happens anyway

We have giant stones in Canada btw. Yuge. Stones in the UK must be tiny

Yeah, yeah. Canadians are always making these claims about their huge stones.

Odd observation: a curling stone weighs about three stone.

 

[The_J]

Last thing which I "learned", and which was not from here, was probably the yard.

Because we were on the highway, and the navigation system was said to English. It told us to leave the highway at the next exit in 400 yards.
And I was like "WTF, that could be anywhere, someone please quickly google how much that is".

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Last thing which I "learned", and which was not from here, was probably the yard.

Because we were on the highway, and the navigation system was said to English. It told us to leave the highway at the next exit in 400 yards.
And I was like "WTF, that could be anywhere, someone please quickly google how much that is".

At that point you should already have seen the next exit and been able to to just say "Huh, so that's 400 yards. Looks like half a kilometer...maybe a bit less."

 

[schlaufuchs]

The mile, i.e. "mille passuum". Also the passus. They get referenced a lot in Classical Latin texts.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Garden Gnome Obesity is no laughing matter!

Man, I used to watch that gnome cartoon all the time when I was a kid.

 

[PhroX]

Some of the weird units in the imperial system like Poundal (force), the Slug (mass) and the Blob (also mass). The latter was just something amusing I came across while looking up the first two, but poundals and slugs have cropped up in technical stuff while working on US based engineering projects, and even half the people over there didn't seem to know what they are....

 

[Snerk]

Reading for a physics exam these days so I'm learning more about all kinds of units of measurement. With more to come next year.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Not exactly a unit of measurement but I recently learnt about the Baker's dozen, which is a dozen of 13. Apparently it originated in medieval England, where laws stipulated that any baker caught trying to trick a client would lose a hand under the axe. So to keep his hands safe bakers usually served 13 loafs of bread instead of 12.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I've always known an acre is a unit for measuring land. At 42, I am still uncertain how 'big' an acre actually is (be able to look at a property and say, "Oh, that looks to be about x acres").

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I think the mil was the last unit of measurement I learned. Lots of people confuse it with mm but it is not the same, it is a thousanth of an inch.

 

[The_J]

At that point you should already have seen the next exit and been able to to just say "Huh, so that's 400 yards. Looks like half a kilometer...maybe a bit less."

On some of the rings the exits and changes are pretty tight together...so no, didn't have a clue ^^.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

On some of the rings the exits and changes are pretty tight together...so no, didn't have a clue ^^.

No matter how tight they are packed, next is still next.

I'm only belaboring the point because I have seen similar responses from people when I use a metric unit for some reason. It's like they are so committed to "I don't know metric" that they can't bring themselves to see the obvious. A product that sells for $500 a pound also sells for $1100 a kilo. They can bust out $500 and when you hand over a pound they hardly even need a scale because they can eyeball a pound without a blink, but if they bust out $1100 they don't know whether to pick it up in a truck or a thimble, because they "don't know metric." They aren't stupid, so there's no reason they can't guess from the price that a kilo is a couple pounds plus some, but their resistance to the metric system sends them down this rabbit hole. It's hilarious.

 

[PhroX]

I've always known an acre is a unit for measuring land. At 42, I am still uncertain how 'big' an acre actually is (be able to look at a property and say, "Oh, that looks to be about x acres").

On the subject of acres, I remember while at university coming across a paper related to groundwater used in California (I was researching for an assignment). It measured volumes of water in acre-feet....

 

[Timsup2nothin]

On the subject of acres, I remember while at university coming across a paper related to groundwater used in California (I was researching for an assignment). It measured volumes of water in acre-feet....

That's a very convenient unit. The surface area of a reservoir in acres is reasonably constant over the normal range of levels it holds, and for a given reservoir that constant is committed to memory by pretty much anyone who has reason to care. So by looking at a depth stick and a simple multiplication you can report a volume change in acre-feet. FWIW you can then multiply by four and a third and add two zeros to get an approximation in CCFs, which is the standard unit for water sales in California.

@Bamspeedy

Visit a rural area at the edge of the suburbs. It should be really easy to find an area developed in one acre lots. Once you see them they get really easy to recognize and you find out that you didn't have to go nearly that far to see an example, because even in urban areas there are commercial and multi-unit residential developments all over the place that are on the old one acre lots.

Acres fall out of subdividing a square mile parcel using a half split process. If you own a mile square parcel you put roads on all four sides, then roads crossing in the center splitting it into quarters. Then you take a quarter and cut it into four equal strips with three roads, again using half splitting. Each of those strips is 32 acres, so if you go along the roads and half split three times to make sixteen lots on each side each lot is about an acre. Example.