Misplaced Pages

#851148

101-643: Many people have made use of, or invented , units of measurement intended primarily for their humor value. This is a list of such units invented by sources that are notable for reasons other than having made the unit itself, and that are widely known in the Anglophone world for their humor value . Most countries use the International System of Units ( SI ). In contrast, the furlong / firkin / fortnight system of units of measurement draws attention by being extremely old fashioned and off-beat at

202-497: A protologism is such a term used exclusively within a small group; a prelogism is such a term that is gaining usage but still not mainstream; and a neologism has become accepted or recognized by social institutions. Neologisms are often driven by changes in culture and technology. Popular examples of neologisms can be found in science , technology , fiction (notably science fiction ), films and television, commercial branding, literature , jargon , cant , linguistics ,

303-399: A mile (1  km ). Liquid volume is measured in gloops, and temperature in degrees Q (57 °Q is said to be the freezing point of water). In issue 33, Mad published a partial table of the " Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures" developed by 19-year-old Donald E. Knuth , later a famed computer scientist . According to Knuth, the basis of this new revolutionary system is

404-467: A very-large-scale integration (VLSI) chip equal to 0.00627264 sq in (4.0468564224 mm) or the area of a square of side length 0.0792 in (2.01168 mm). VLSI nanoacres have similar total costs to acres in Silicon Valley . This unit is similar in concept to the attoparsec, combining very large and small scales. When a barn (a very small unit of area used for measuring

505-533: A 2015 interview that the Curiosity rover team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory uses the similar unit 'watt-hours per sol' in their meetings, and the team told Weir that they should just call them milli-pirate-ninjas. The Friedman is approximately six months, specifically six months in the future, and named after columnist Thomas Friedman who repeatedly used the span in reference to when

606-469: A WAM for Wiffle (ball) assisted measurement, is equal to a sphere 89 millimetres (3.5 inches) in diameter – the size of a Wiffle ball , a perforated, light-weight plastic ball frequently used by marine biologists as a size reference in photos to measure corals and other objects. The spherical shape makes it omnidirectional and perfect for taking a speedy measurement, and the open design also allows it to avoid being crushed by water pressure. Wiffle balls are

707-482: A book they start. Invented by mathematician Jordan Ellenberg , books with a lower HI are less likely to be completed. It is named after Stephen Hawking , whose book A Brief History of Time scores 6.6% on the scale. 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. Other derived units such as

808-399: A determination of Iraq's future could be surmised. A jiffy is a unit of time used in computer operating systems, being the interval of time between system timer interrupts. This interval varies from system to system, but is typically between 1 and 10 milliseconds. According to Gian-Carlo Rota , the mathematician John von Neumann used the term microcentury to denote the maximum length of

909-423: A factor of 100. Therefore a new definition of the second is planned. Atomic clocks now set the length of a second and the time standard for the world. 12960276813 408986496 × 10 − 9 {\displaystyle {\frac {12960276813}{408986496}}\times 10^{-9}} of the tropical year for 1900 January 0 at 12 h ET. 11th CGPM 1960 Resolution 9 CIPM 1967

1010-620: A formula describing a mean tropical year that decreased linearly over time. In 1956, the second was redefined in terms of a year relative to that epoch . The second was thus defined as "the fraction 1 ⁄ 31,556,925.9747 of the tropical year for 1900 January 0 at 12 hours ephemeris time". This definition was adopted as part of the International System of Units in 1960. Even the best mechanical, electric motorized and quartz crystal-based clocks develop discrepancies from environmental conditions; far better for timekeeping

1111-515: A given computer mouse pointing device. It is named after Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse cartoon character. Mouse motion is reported in horizontal and vertical mickeys. Device sensitivity is usually specified in mickeys per inch. Typical resolution is 500 mickeys per inch (16 mickeys per mm), but resolutions up to 16,000 mickeys per inch (600 mickeys per mm) are available. A Muggeseggele is a humorous Alemannic German idiom used in Swabia to designate

SECTION 10

#1732786928852

1212-409: A humorous tribute to Carl Sagan and his association with the catchphrase "billions and billions", a sagan has been defined as a large quantity – technically at least four billion (two billion plus two billion) – of anything. Parsecs are used in astronomy to measure interstellar distances. A parsec is approximately 3.26 light-years or about 3.086×10 m (1.917×10  mi ). Combining it with

1313-435: A lecture. One microcentury is 52 minutes and 35.7 seconds ‍ —    one millionth of a century. A unit sometimes used in computing, the term is believed to have been coined by IBM in 1969 from the design objective "never to let the user wait more than a few nanocenturies for a response". A nanocentury is one-billionth of a century or approximately 3.156 seconds. Tom Duff is cited as saying that, to within half

1414-525: A measure of radioactive decay, is measured in inverse seconds and higher powers of second are involved in derivatives of acceleration such as jerk . Though many derivative units for everyday things are reported in terms of larger units of time, not seconds, they are ultimately defined in terms of the SI second; this includes time expressed in hours and minutes, velocity of a car in kilometers per hour or miles per hour, kilowatt hours of electricity usage, and speed of

1515-569: A meter long; the fastest human sprinters run 10 meters in a second; an ocean wave in deep water travels about 23 meters in one second; sound travels about 343 meters in one second in air; light takes 1.3 seconds to reach Earth from the surface of the Moon, a distance of 384,400 kilometers. A second is directly part of other units, such as frequency measured in hertz ( inverse seconds or s ), speed in meters per second, and acceleration in meters per second squared. The metric system unit becquerel ,

1616-458: A microwave cavity. The fraction of excited atoms is then detected by laser beams. These clocks have 5 × 10 systematic uncertainty, which is equivalent to 50 picoseconds per day. A system of several fountains worldwide contribute to International Atomic Time. These caesium clocks also underpin optical frequency measurements. Optical clocks are based on forbidden optical transitions in ions or atoms. They have frequencies around 10  Hz , with

1717-596: A misguided romantic quest like that of the title character in Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes ; Scrooge , a pejorative for misers based on the avaricious main character in Charles Dickens ' A Christmas Carol ; and Pollyanna , referring to people who are unfailingly optimistic like the title character of Eleanor H. Porter's Pollyanna . Neologisms are often introduced in technical writing, so-called Fachtexte or 'technical texts' through

1818-451: A much cheaper alternative to using two reference lasers, which often pass straight through gaps in thin corals. A scientist on the research vessel EV  Nautilus is credited with pioneering the technique. A barn is a serious metric unit of area used by nuclear physicists to quantify the scattering or absorption cross-section of very small particles, such as atomic nuclei. One barn is equal to 1.0 × 10 m . The name derives from

1919-528: A natural linewidth Δ f {\displaystyle \Delta f} of typically 1 Hz, so the Q-factor is about 10 , or even higher. They have better stabilities than microwave clocks, which means that they can facilitate evaluation of lower uncertainties. They also have better time resolution, which means the clock "ticks" faster. Optical clocks use either a single ion, or an optical lattice with 10 – 10 atoms. A definition based on

2020-494: A nonspecific very small length or amount of something; it refers to a housefly 's scrotum . A measure of distance equal to about 7 ⁄ 8 of a mile (1.4  km ), 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 putative meanings for words that are actually just place names. It

2121-482: A percent, a nanocentury is π seconds. The New York second ("the shortest unit of time in the multiverse") is defined in Terry Pratchett 's novel Lords and Ladies as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind one honking. The idiomatic expression "in a New York minute ", used in various contexts to mean an instant or a very short time, is of similar origin, referring to

SECTION 20

#1732786928852

2222-426: A person may replace a word with a nonsensical one of their own invention (e.g., "I got so angry I picked up a dish and threw it at the gelsinger"). The use of neologisms may also be due to aphasia acquired after brain damage resulting from a stroke or head injury . Second The second (symbol: s ) is a unit of time , historically defined as 1 ⁄ 86400 of a day – this factor derived from

2323-424: A person's idiolect , one's unique patterns of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Neologisms are usually introduced when it is found that a specific notion is lacking a term, or when the existing vocabulary lacks detail, or when a speaker is unaware of the existing vocabulary. The law, governmental bodies, and technology have a relatively high frequency of acquiring neologisms. Another trigger that motivates

2424-442: A quality or attribute of a perceived object, as opposed to its essence. In physics, new terms were introduced sometimes via nonce formation (e.g., Murray Gell-Man 's quark , taken from James Joyce ) or through derivation (e.g. John von Neumann's kiloton , coined by combining the common prefix kilo- 'thousand' with the noun ton ). Neologisms therefore are a vital component of scientific jargon or termini technici . Polari

2525-592: A second is a 1-gigahertz microprocessor that has a cycle time of 1 nanosecond. Camera shutter speeds are often expressed in fractions of a second, such as 1 ⁄ 30 second or 1 ⁄ 1000 second. Sexagesimal divisions of the day from a calendar based on astronomical observation have existed since the third millennium BC, though they were not seconds as we know them today. Small divisions of time could not be measured back then, so such divisions were mathematically derived. The first timekeepers that could count seconds accurately were pendulum clocks invented in

2626-508: A second was selected to correspond exactly to the length of the ephemeris second previously defined. Atomic clocks use such a frequency to measure seconds by counting cycles per second at that frequency. Radiation of this kind is one of the most stable and reproducible phenomena of nature. The current generation of atomic clocks is accurate to within one second in a few hundred million years. Since 1967, atomic clocks based on atoms other than caesium-133 have been developed with increased precision by

2727-477: A single day differs from the next by only a small amount; 15 minutes is a cumulative difference over a part of the year. The effect is due chiefly to the obliqueness of Earth's axis with respect to its orbit around the Sun. The difference between apparent solar time and mean time was recognized by astronomers since antiquity, but prior to the invention of accurate mechanical clocks in the mid-17th century, sundials were

2828-405: A six-pack of Genesee beer to wait out an upcoming snowstorm. The index is measured in cans of beer, with roughly one can for every 4 inches (10 cm) of expected snowfall (the index is not perfectly linear at its lower levels as originally introduced); thus, Griffin's six-pack would be recommended for a storm bringing two feet of snow. One mickey is the smallest resolvable unit of distance by

2929-511: A term still below the threshold of a neologism according to Merriam-Webster , is an example of the latter which has specifically spread primarily through Facebook group and Twitter account use. The suspected origin of this way of referring to dogs stems from a Facebook group founded in 2008 and gaining popularity in 2014 in Australia. In Australian English it is common to use diminutives , often ending in –o, which could be where doggo-lingo

3030-400: A turntable in rotations per minute. Moreover, most other SI base units are defined by their relationship to the second: the meter is defined by setting the speed of light (in vacuum) to be 299 792 458 m/s, exactly; definitions of the SI base units kilogram , ampere , kelvin , and candela also depend on the second. The only base unit whose definition does not depend on the second

3131-513: A two-digit seconds counter. SI prefixes are frequently combined with the word second to denote subdivisions of the second: milliseconds (thousandths), microseconds (millionths), nanoseconds (billionths), and sometimes smaller units of a second. Multiples of seconds are usually counted in hours and minutes. Though SI prefixes may also be used to form multiples of the second such as kiloseconds (thousands of seconds), such units are rarely used in practice. An everyday experience with small fractions of

List of humorous units of measurement - Misplaced Pages Continue

3232-606: A type of dairy product ) from James Joyce 's Finnegans Wake . The title of a book may become a neologism, for instance, Catch-22 (from the title of Joseph Heller 's novel). Alternatively, the author's name may give rise to the neologism, although the term is sometimes based on only one work of that author. This includes such words as " Orwellian " (from George Orwell , referring to his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four ) and "Kafkaesque" (from Franz Kafka ). Names of famous characters are another source of literary neologisms. Some examples include: Quixotic , referring to

3333-408: A unit of a dirac which was one word per hour. The Garn is a unit used by NASA to measure nausea and travel sickness caused by space adaptation syndrome . It is named after astronaut Jake Garn , who was frequently sick during tests and on orbit. A score of one Garn means the sufferer is completely incapacitated. The Hawking Index (HI) is a unit given as a percentage, of how many people will finish

3434-545: A very small distance, as in "he missed crashing into the truck by a bee’s dick". It is derived from the presumed small size of a male bee's penis. Television station WKBW-TV in Buffalo, New York developed the "Jimmy Griffin Snow Index" to measure the potential severity of a snowstorm. It is named after former Buffalo mayor James D. Griffin , who in 1985 earned the nickname "Six Pack Jimmy" after suggesting residents grab

3535-483: Is interdisciplinary . Anyone such as a lexicographer or an etymologist might study neologisms, how their uses span the scope of human expression, and how, due to science and technology, they spread more rapidly than ever before in the present times. The term neologism has a broader meaning which also includes "a word which has gained a new meaning". Sometimes, the latter process is called semantic shifting , or semantic extension . Neologisms are distinct from

3636-456: Is 604,800 seconds; a year (other than leap years ) is 31,536,000 seconds; and a ( Gregorian ) century averages 3,155,695,200 seconds; with all of the above excluding any possible leap seconds . In astronomy, a Julian year is precisely 31,557,600 seconds. Some common events in seconds are: a stone falls about 4.9 meters from rest in one second; a pendulum of length about one meter has a swing of one second, so pendulum clocks have pendulums about

3737-413: Is a blend of the words "breakfast" and "lunch", or through abbreviation or acronym , by intentionally rhyming with existing words or simply through playing with sounds. A relatively rare form of neologism is when proper names are used as words (e.g., boycott , from Charles Boycott ), including guy , dick , Chad , and Karen . Neologisms can become popular through memetics , through mass media ,

3838-497: Is a cant used by some actors, circus performers, and the gay subculture to communicate without outsiders understanding. Some Polari terms have crossed over into mainstream slang, in part through their usage in pop song lyrics and other works. Example include: acdc , barney , blag , butch , camp , khazi , cottaging , hoofer , mince , ogle , scarper , slap , strides , tod , [rough] trade ( rough trade ). Verlan ( French pronunciation: [vɛʁlɑ̃] ), ( verlan

3939-665: Is an unsigned clock depicting Orpheus in the Fremersdorf collection, dated between 1560 and 1570. During the 3rd quarter of the 16th century, Taqi al-Din built a clock with marks every 1/5 minute. In 1579, Jost Bürgi built a clock for William of Hesse that marked seconds. In 1581, Tycho Brahe redesigned clocks that had displayed only minutes at his observatory so they also displayed seconds, even though those seconds were not accurate. In 1587, Tycho complained that his four clocks disagreed by plus or minus four seconds. In 1656, Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens invented

4040-505: Is crucial in various industries and legal systems. Inaccurate translations can lead to 'translation asymmetry' or misunderstandings and miscommunication. Many technical glossaries of English translations exist to combat this issue in the medical, judicial, and technological fields. In psychiatry and neuroscience , the term neologism is used to describe words that have meaning only to the person who uses them, independent of their common meaning. This can be seen in schizophrenia , where

4141-753: Is named after the Isle of Sheppey in the UK. The Smoot is a unit of length, defined as the height in 1958 of Oliver R. Smoot , who later became the chairman of the American National Standards Institute ( ANSI ), and then the president of the International Organization for Standardization ( ISO ). The unit is used to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge . Canonically, and originally, in 1958 when Smoot

List of humorous units of measurement - Misplaced Pages Continue

4242-410: Is named after the length of White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci 's tenure under President Trump. In nuclear physics, a shake is 10 nanoseconds, the approximate time for a generation within a nuclear chain reaction. The term comes from the expression "two shakes of a lamb's tail", meaning quickly. A tatum is the "lowest regular pulse train that a listener intuitively infers from

4343-553: Is proposed as an SI unit to replace the old "Crackpot Index" that was presented in 1998. Quack words include 'energy', 'holistic', 'vibrations', 'magnetic healing', 'quantum'. These words are usually borrowed from physics and used to promote dubious health claims. The scale is from 0 to 10, with 0 being 'no quackery' and 10 being 'complete quackery'. Physicist Paul Dirac was known among his colleagues for his precise yet taciturn nature. His colleagues in Cambridge jokingly defined

4444-448: Is seldom used, as it is understood to be too large for normal conversation; its most common form is the microLenat. The Lovelace (Ll) is the unit of the lack of quality of an operating system , i.e., a measure of system administrators ' opinions about how badly the system "sucks". The unit has been coined by members of the system administrator profession who hold a basic tenet that "software that does not suck does not exist". According to

4545-412: Is the mole , and only two of the 22 named derived units, radian and steradian , do not depend on the second either. A set of atomic clocks throughout the world keeps time by consensus: the clocks "vote" on the correct time, and all voting clocks are steered to agree with the consensus, which is called International Atomic Time (TAI). TAI "ticks" atomic seconds. Civil time is defined to agree with

4646-413: Is the natural and exact "vibration" in an energized atom. The frequency of vibration (i.e., radiation) is very specific depending on the type of atom and how it is excited. Since 1967, the second has been defined as exactly "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom". This length of

4747-497: Is the predominant language for published research and studies, like-sounding translations (referred to as 'naturalization') are sometimes used. Alternatively, the English word is used along with a brief explanation of meaning. The four translation methods are emphasized in order to translate neologisms: transliteration , transcription , the use of analogues, and loan translation . When translating from English to other languages,

4848-485: Is the reverse of the expression "l'envers") is a type of argot in the French language , featuring inversion of syllables in a word, and is common in slang and youth language. It rests on a long French tradition of transposing syllables of individual words to create slang words. Some verlan words, such as meuf ("femme", which means "woman" roughly backwards), have become so commonplace that they have been included in

4949-431: Is unusual for a word to gain popularity if it does not clearly resemble other words. The term neologism is first attested in English in 1772, borrowed from French néologisme (1734). The French word derives from Greek νέο- néo (="new") and λόγος / lógos , meaning "speech, utterance". In an academic sense, there is no professional neologist, because the study of such things (cultural or ethnic vernacular, for example)

5050-493: The Petit Larousse . Like any slang, the purpose of verlan is to create a somewhat secret language that only its speakers can understand. Words becoming mainstream is counterproductive. As a result, such newly common words are re-verlanised: reversed a second time. The common meuf became feumeu . Neologism development may be spurred, or at least spread, by popular culture. Examples of pop-culture neologisms include

5151-540: The Zork series of games, the Great Underground Empire has its own system of measurements, the most frequently referenced of which is the bloit. Defined as the distance the king's favorite pet can run in one hour (spoofing a popular legend about the history of the foot ), the length of the bloit varies dramatically, but the one canonical conversion to real-world units puts it at approximately two-thirds of

SECTION 50

#1732786928852

5252-502: The Hubble constant and the speed of light . This amounts to around 13.1 litres (3.46 US gallons , 2.88 Imperial gallons ). This facetious engineering unit is defined as 250 watts  – about a third of a horsepower . A pirate-ninja is defined as one kilowatt-hour (3.6 MJ ) per Martian day, or sol . It is equivalent to approximately 40.55 watts. It is used in the 2011 novel The Martian by Andy Weir . Weir said in

5353-458: The Internet , and word of mouth , including academic discourse in many fields renowned for their use of distinctive jargon , and often become accepted parts of the language. Other times, they disappear from common use just as readily as they appeared. Whether a neologism continues as part of the language depends on many factors, probably the most important of which is acceptance by the public. It

5454-532: The Rydberg constant would involve fixing the value to a certain value: R ∞ = m e e 4 8 ε 0 2 h 3 c = m e c α 2 2 h {\displaystyle R_{\infty }={\frac {m_{\text{e}}e^{4}}{8\varepsilon _{0}^{2}h^{3}c}}={\frac {m_{\text{e}}c\alpha ^{2}}{2h}}} . The Rydberg constant describes

5555-588: The Usenet alt.sysadmin.recovery FAQ, one Lovelace is considered a rather large quantity. SI prefixes are commonly used to denote practical quantities. A MegaFonzie is a fictional unit of measurement of an object's coolness invented by Professor Farnsworth in the 2003 Futurama episode " Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV ". A 'Fonzie' is about the amount of coolness inherent in the Happy Days character Fonzie . During World War II , scientists working for

5656-458: The mean time , as opposed to the apparent time displayed by sundials . By that time, sexagesimal divisions of time were well established in Europe. The earliest clocks to display seconds appeared during the last half of the 16th century. The second became accurately measurable with the development of mechanical clocks. The earliest spring-driven timepiece with a second hand that marked seconds

5757-497: The sidereal year at that epoch by the IAU in 1952. This extrapolated timescale brings the observed positions of the celestial bodies into accord with Newtonian dynamical theories of their motion. In 1955, the tropical year , considered more fundamental than the sidereal year, was chosen by the IAU as the unit of time. The tropical year in the definition was not measured but calculated from

5858-618: The visual arts , and popular culture. Examples of words that were 20th-century neologisms include laser (1960), an acronym of light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation ; robot (1921) from Czech writer Karel Čapek 's play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) ; and agitprop (1930; a portmanteau of Russian "agitatsiya" (agitation) and "propaganda"). Neologisms are often formed by combining existing words (see compound noun and adjective ) or by giving words new and unique suffixes or prefixes . Neologisms can also be formed by blending words, for example, "brunch"

5959-579: The " atto- " prefix (×10) yields attoparsec (apc), a conveniently human-scaled unit of about 3.086 centimetres (1.215 in) that is used only humorously. The beard-second is a unit of length inspired by the light-year , but applicable to extremely short distances such as those in integrated circuits . It is the length an average beard grows in one second . Kemp Bennett Kolb defines the distance as exactly 100  angstroms (10  nanometres ), as does Nordling and Österman's Physics Handbook . Google Calculator uses 5 nm. An Australian term for

6060-681: The "Date" system in Knuth's article, which substitutes a 10-clarke " mingo " for a month and a 100-clarke "cowznofski", for a year, the date of October 29, 2007 is rendered as "Cal 7, 201 C. M." (for Cowznofsko Madi, or "in the Cowznofski of our MAD"). The dates are calculated from October 1, 1952, the date MAD was first published. Dates before this point are referred to (perhaps tongue-in-cheek) as "B.M." ("Before MAD.") The ten "Mingoes" are: Tales (Tal.) Calculated (Cal.) To (To) Drive (Dri.) You (You) Humor (Hum.) In (In) A (A) Jugular (Jug.) Vein (Vei.) As

6161-400: The 14th century, had displays that divided the hour into halves, thirds, quarters and sometimes even 12 parts, but never by 60. In fact, the hour was not commonly divided in 60 minutes as it was not uniform in duration. It was not practical for timekeepers to consider minutes until the first mechanical clocks that displayed minutes appeared near the end of the 16th century. Mechanical clocks kept

SECTION 60

#1732786928852

6262-471: The 17th century. Starting in the 1950s, atomic clocks became better timekeepers than Earth's rotation, and they continue to set the standard today. A mechanical clock, which does not depend on measuring the relative rotational position of the Earth, keeps uniform time called mean time , within whatever accuracy is intrinsic to it. That means that every second, minute and every other division of time counted by

6363-424: The 2010s held the accuracy record: it gains or loses less than a second in 15 billion years, which is longer than the estimated age of the universe. Such a clock can measure a change in its elevation of as little as 2 cm by the change in its rate due to gravitational time dilation . There have only ever been three definitions of the second: as a fraction of the day, as a fraction of an extrapolated year, and as

6464-571: The Advancement of Science (BAAS) in 1862 stated that "All men of science are agreed to use the second of mean solar time as the unit of time." BAAS formally proposed the CGS system in 1874, although this system was gradually replaced over the next 70 years by MKS units. Both the CGS and MKS systems used the same second as their base unit of time. MKS was adopted internationally during the 1940s, defining

6565-761: The American alt-Right (2010s), the Canadian portmanteau " Snowmageddon " (2009), the Russian parody " Monstration " ( c.  2004 ), Santorum ( c.  2003 ). Neologisms spread mainly through their exposure in mass media . The genericizing of brand names , such as "coke" for Coca-Cola , "kleenex" for Kleenex facial tissue, and "xerox" for Xerox photocopying , all spread through their popular use being enhanced by mass media. However, in some limited cases, words break out of their original communities and spread through social media . " DoggoLingo ",

6666-514: The British Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development encountered a particularly obstructive Royal Navy officer called Commander Pouter, for whom the unit of Obstruction was named, due to his implacable opposition to any work being carried out in the field for which he was personally responsible. Subsequently, the micropouter was used, as it was hoped that no individual of a similarly difficult disposition would be encountered, and

6767-493: The Computer Revolution , Levy mentions how Richard Greenblatt prioritized his work over bathing, leading to a strong stench. Therefore, Greenblatt's coworkers conceived of the blatt as a joke, though the milliblatt was used more, as the blatt was so powerful it was "just about inconceivable". The canard is a unit of quackery created by Andy Lewis in the need for a fractional index measuring pseudoscience . It

6868-481: The Latin pars minuta prima , meaning "first small part" i.e. first division of the hour - dividing into sixty, and "second" comes from the pars minuta secunda , "second small part", dividing again into sixty. Analog clocks and watches often have sixty tick marks on their faces, representing seconds (and minutes), and a "second hand" to mark the passage of time in seconds. Digital clocks and watches often have

6969-507: The Sun (a year) was much more stable than Earth's rotation. This led to proposals as early as 1950 to define the second as a fraction of a year. The Earth's motion was described in Newcomb's Tables of the Sun (1895), which provided a formula for estimating the motion of the Sun relative to the epoch 1900 based on astronomical observations made between 1750 and 1892. This resulted in adoption of an ephemeris time scale expressed in units of

7070-563: The atoms move very fast, causing Doppler shifts. The radiation needed to cool the hydrogen – 121.5 nm – is also difficult. Another hurdle involves improving the uncertainty in QED calculations, specifically the Lamb shift in the 1s-2s transition of the hydrogen atom. A redefinition must include improved optical clock reliability. TAI must be contributed to by optical clocks before the BIPM affirms

7171-424: The busyness of New York and impatience of its residents. An "ohnosecond" is the second after one makes a terrible mistake, such as deleting the wrong file or sending a text message to the wrong person, where the person in question can do nothing but say "oh no". The term is believed to originate from Elizabeth Powell Crowe's 1993 novel, The Electronic Traveler . A Scaramucci (or Mooch) is 11 (sometimes 10) days and

7272-402: The caesium atom used to realize the definition. In a laboratory sufficiently small to allow the effects of the non-uniformity of the gravitational field to be neglected when compared to the uncertainties of the realization of the second, the proper second is obtained after application of the special relativistic correction for the velocity of the atom in the laboratory. It is wrong to correct for

7373-473: The clock has the same duration as any other identical division of time. But a sundial , which measures the relative position of the Sun in the sky called apparent time , does not keep uniform time. The time kept by a sundial varies by time of year, meaning that seconds, minutes and every other division of time is a different duration at different times of the year. The time of day measured with mean time versus apparent time may differ by as much as 15 minutes, but

7474-655: The coining of a neologism is to disambiguate a term which may be unclear due to having many meanings. Neologisms may come from a word used in the narrative of fiction such as novels and short stories. Examples include " grok " (to intuitively understand) from the science fiction novel about a Martian entitled Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein ; " McJob " (precarious, poorly-paid employment) from Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland ; " cyberspace " (widespread, interconnected digital technology) from Neuromancer by William Gibson and " quark " (Slavic slang for "rubbish"; German for

7575-492: The cross sectional area of atomic nuclei ) is multiplied by a megaparsec (a very large unit of length used for measuring the distances between galaxies ), the result is a human-scaled unit of volume approximately equal to 2 ⁄ 3 of a teaspoon (about 3 mL). Similar to the barn-megaparsec, the Hubble-barn uses the barn with the Hubble length , which is the radius of the visible universe as derived by using

7676-458: The division of the day first into 24 hours , then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of Units (SI) is more precise: The second [...] is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency, Δ ν Cs , the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9 192 631 770 when expressed in

7777-462: The energy levels in a hydrogen atom with the nonrelativistic approximation E n ≈ − R ∞ c h n 2 {\displaystyle E_{n}\approx -{\frac {R_{\infty }ch}{n^{2}}}} . The only viable way to fix the Rydberg constant involves trapping and cooling hydrogen. This is difficult because it is very light and

7878-499: The first pendulum clock. It had a pendulum length of just under a meter, giving it a swing of one second, and an escapement that ticked every second. It was the first clock that could accurately keep time in seconds. By the 1730s, 80 years later, John Harrison 's maritime chronometers could keep time accurate to within one second in 100 days. In 1832, Gauss proposed using the second as the base unit of time in his millimeter–milligram–second system of units . The British Association for

7979-402: The folk expressions "As big as a barn," and "Couldn't hit the broad side of a barn", used by particle accelerator physicists to refer to the probability of achieving a collision between particles. For nuclear purposes, 1.0 × 10 m is actually rather large. The outhouse ( 1.0 × 10 barns ) and shed ( 1.0 × 10 barns ) are derived by analogy. The nanoacre is a unit of real estate on

8080-463: The footnote was added at the 86th (1997) meeting of the CIPM GCPM 1998 7th Edition SI Brochure A future re-definition of the second would be justified if these idealized conditions can be achieved much easier than with the current definition. The definition of the second should be understood as the definition of the unit of proper time: it applies in a small spatial domain that shares the motion of

8181-602: The hour like the modern second (=   ⁠ hour / 60×60 ⁠ ). Sundials and water clocks were among the earliest timekeeping devices, and units of time were measured in degrees of arc. Conceptual units of time smaller than realisable on sundials were also used. There are references to "second" as part of a lunar month in the writings of natural philosophers of the Middle Ages, which were mathematical subdivisions that could not be measured mechanically. The earliest mechanical clocks, which appeared starting in

8282-408: The local gravitational field. The reference to an unperturbed atom is intended to make it clear that the definition of the SI second is based on an isolated caesium atom that is unperturbed by any external field, such as ambient black-body radiation. The second, so defined, is the unit of proper time in the sense of the general theory of relativity. To allow the provision of a coordinated time scale,

8383-455: The locations of accidents and incidents on the bridge. When the original markings were removed or covered over during bridge maintenance, the police had to request that someone reapply the Smoot scale markings. During a major bridge rebuild, the concrete sidewalk was permanently divided into segments one Smoot in length, as opposed to the regular division of six feet. A wiffle, also referred to as

8484-431: The microwave frequency of a caesium atomic clock, which have each realized a sexagesimal division of the day from ancient astronomical calendars. Civilizations in the classic period and earlier created divisions of the calendar as well as arcs using a sexagesimal system of counting, so at that time the second was a sexagesimal subdivision of the day (ancient second   =   ⁠ day / 60×60 ⁠ ), not of

8585-498: The naturalization method is most often used. The most common way that professional translators translate neologisms is through the Think aloud protocol (TAP), wherein translators find the most appropriate and natural sounding word through speech. As such, translators can use potential translations in sentences and test them with different structures and syntax. Correct translations from English for specific purposes into other languages

8686-459: The negative helen (the power to beach ships) have also been described. The unit of bogosity , i.e. how bogus a person, claim, or proceeding is, derived from the fictional field of Quantum bogodynamics , is the Lenat, named after Douglas Lenat , a computer scientist and professor who failed one of his students on an exam because they answered "AI is bogus" on all of the questions. The Lenat itself

8787-437: The only reliable timepieces, and apparent solar time was the only generally accepted standard. Fractions of a second are usually denoted in decimal notation, for example 2.01 seconds, or two and one hundredth seconds. Multiples of seconds are usually expressed as minutes and seconds, or hours, minutes and seconds of clock time, separated by colons, such as 11:23:24, or 45:23 (the latter notation can give rise to ambiguity, because

8888-551: The potrzebie, which equals the thickness of Mad issue 26, or 2.263 348 451 743 817 321 6473  mm. Volume was measured in ngogn (equal to 1000 cubic potrzebies), mass in blintz (equal to the mass of 1 ngogn of halva , which is "a form of pie [with] a specific gravity of 3.1416 and a specific heat of .31416"), and time in seven named units (decimal powers of the average earth rotation, equal to 1 " clarke "). The system also features such units as whatmeworry , cowznofski , vreeble , hoo , and hah . According to

8989-418: The pouter was too large a unit for everyday use. Neologism Neologisms are one facet of lexical innovation , i.e., the linguistic process of new terms and meanings entering a language's lexicon . The most precise studies into language change and word formation , in fact, identify the process of a "neological continuum": a nonce word is any single-use term that may or may not grow in popularity;

9090-573: The process of lexical innovation . Technical subjects such as philosophy, sociology, physics, etc. are especially rich in neologisms. In philosophy, as an example, many terms became introduced into languages through processes of translation, e.g., from Ancient Greek to Latin , or from Latin to German or English , and so on. So Plato introduced the Greek term ποιότης ( poiotēs ), which Cicero rendered with Latin qualitas , which subsequently became our notion of ' quality ' in relation to epistemology, e.g.,

9191-556: The realization of the second based on the Cs hyperfine transition frequency, but some can be reproduced with superior stability. SI Brochure 9 In 2022, the best realisation of the second is done with caesium primary standard clocks such as IT-CsF2, NIST-F2, NPL-CsF2, PTB-CSF2, SU–CsFO2 or SYRTE-FO2. These clocks work by laser-cooling a cloud of Cs atoms to a microkelvin in a magneto-optic trap. These cold atoms are then launched vertically by laser light. The atoms then undergo Ramsey excitation in

9292-421: The rotation of the Earth with respect to the Sun, and does not contain any leap seconds. UT1 always differs from UTC by less than a second. While they are not yet part of any timekeeping standard, optical lattice clocks with frequencies in the visible light spectrum now exist and are the most accurate timekeepers of all. A strontium clock with frequency 430  THz , in the red range of visible light, during

9393-409: The rotation of the Earth. The international standard for timekeeping is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). This time scale "ticks" the same atomic seconds as TAI, but inserts or omits leap seconds as necessary to correct for variations in the rate of rotation of the Earth. A time scale in which the seconds are not exactly equal to atomic seconds is UT1, a form of universal time . UT1 is defined by

9494-403: The same notation is used to denote hours and minutes). It rarely makes sense to express longer periods of time like hours or days in seconds, because they are awkwardly large numbers. For the metric unit of second, there are decimal prefixes representing 10 to 10 seconds. Some common units of time in seconds are: a minute is 60 seconds; an hour is 3,600 seconds; a day is 86,400 seconds; a week

9595-405: The same time. One furlong per fortnight is very nearly 1 centimetre per minute (to within 1 part in 400). Besides having the meaning of "any obscure unit", furlongs per fortnight have also served frequently in the classroom as an example on how to reduce a unit's fraction. The speed of light may be expressed as being roughly 1.8 terafurlongs per fortnight (or megafurlongs per microfortnight). In

9696-412: The second as 1 ⁄ 86,400 of a mean solar day. Sometime in the late 1940s, quartz crystal oscillator clocks with an operating frequency of ~100 kHz advanced to keep time with accuracy better than 1 part in 10 over an operating period of a day. It became apparent that a consensus of such clocks kept better time than the rotation of the Earth. Metrologists also knew that Earth's orbit around

9797-424: The signals of different primary clocks in different locations are combined, which have to be corrected for relativistic caesium frequency shifts (see section 2.3.6). The CIPM has adopted various secondary representations of the second, based on a selected number of spectral lines of atoms, ions or molecules. The unperturbed frequencies of these lines can be determined with a relative uncertainty not lower than that of

9898-460: The timing of perceived musical events". It is named after the jazz pianist Art Tatum , who was notable for his high-speed playing. Banana equivalent dose , the amount of radiation exposure gained from eating an average banana. A single BED is considered to be negligibly small, posing no health risk. These units describe dimensions which are not and cannot be covered by the International System of Units. In Steven Levy 's book Hackers: Heroes of

9999-406: The unit Hz , which is equal to s . This current definition was adopted in 1967 when it became feasible to define the second based on fundamental properties of nature with caesium clocks . Because the speed of Earth's rotation varies and is slowing ever so slightly , a leap second is added at irregular intervals to civil time to keep clocks in sync with Earth's rotation. "Minute" comes from

10100-409: Was a Lambda Chi Alpha pledge at MIT (class of 1962), the bridge was measured to be 364.4 Smoots, plus or minus one ear, using Mr. Smoot himself as a ruler . At the time, Smoot was 5 feet , 7 inches , or 170 cm , tall. Google Earth and Google Calculator include the smoot as a unit of measurement. The Cambridge (Massachusetts) police department adopted the convention of using Smoots to measure

10201-400: Was first used. The term has grown so that Merriam-Webster has acknowledged its use but notes the term needs to be found in published, edited work for a longer period of time before it can be deemed a new word, making it the perfect example of a neologism. Because neologisms originate in one language, translations between languages can be difficult. In the scientific community, where English

#851148