Fun with Crazy Units
It's always fun to answer a physics problem in rhythmic, funny, or wierd units. Given a problem to find the volume of something, answer it in picopicapecks per parsec. Read more...
Part I: Wierd SI prefixes
Many times I've been asked what a yoctosecond is on the front of my site. For a quick answer, a yoctosecond is 10^-24 seconds. A yocto is an SI prefix - one that probably doesn't make its way into most textbooks. Here's a list of all of them:
Part II: The lost non-SI units
There are a lot of units that are perhaps not seen or used much at all, but they "officially" exist. They aren't strictly SI - some are metric units and many are non-metric . For example, a barn measures area, cords and gills measure volume. The galileo measures acceleration. You may have heard of the slug as a unit of mass, but have you heard of the glug, which also exists? This site does a lot of conversions, so you can see some of these...
Part III: Even funnier units
You might have seen VA (Volts*Amperes) sometimes written instead of watt, or other "multiplied" units (kg*m/s, footpound, etc.). Some wierd results con come if you multiply some of the above "lost" units... and even add SI prefixes as shown in Part I.
AP Physics students at my school came up with this: barn is area, yard is distance, so barnyard is volume. Then atmosphere is pressure, so barnyard atmosphere is a unit of energy. If I calculated correctly, here are some funny units you could possibly use :)
Energy: 1 barnyard atmosphere = 9.265 x 10-24 Joules
Volume: 1 picopicapeck/parsec = 1.243 x 10-33 cubic metres
Velocity: 1 furlong/fortnight = 1.663 x 10-4 metres/second
Force: 1 slugspat/winkblink = 1.135 x 1036 Newtons
Power: 1 pondspan/eon = 7.104 x 10-20 Watts
Hopefully I did the conversions correctly... let me know if something is wrong or you find any more cool ones!
Part I: Wierd SI prefixes
Many times I've been asked what a yoctosecond is on the front of my site. For a quick answer, a yoctosecond is 10^-24 seconds. A yocto is an SI prefix - one that probably doesn't make its way into most textbooks. Here's a list of all of them:
| Prefix | Exponent | Prefix | Exponent |
| yocto | 10^-24 | yotta | 10^24 |
| zepto | 10^-21 | zetta | 10^21 |
| atto | 10^-18 | exa | 10^18 |
| femto | 10^-15 | peta | 10^15 |
| pico | 10^-12 | tera | 10^12 |
| nano | 10^-9 | giga | 10^9 |
| micro | 10^-6 | mega | 10^6 |
| milli | 10^-3 | kilo | 10^3 |
| centi | 10^-2 | hecto | 10^2 |
| deci | 10^-1 | deka | 10^1 |
Part II: The lost non-SI units
There are a lot of units that are perhaps not seen or used much at all, but they "officially" exist. They aren't strictly SI - some are metric units and many are non-metric . For example, a barn measures area, cords and gills measure volume. The galileo measures acceleration. You may have heard of the slug as a unit of mass, but have you heard of the glug, which also exists? This site does a lot of conversions, so you can see some of these...
Part III: Even funnier units
You might have seen VA (Volts*Amperes) sometimes written instead of watt, or other "multiplied" units (kg*m/s, footpound, etc.). Some wierd results con come if you multiply some of the above "lost" units... and even add SI prefixes as shown in Part I.
AP Physics students at my school came up with this: barn is area, yard is distance, so barnyard is volume. Then atmosphere is pressure, so barnyard atmosphere is a unit of energy. If I calculated correctly, here are some funny units you could possibly use :)
Volume: 1 picopicapeck/parsec = 1.243 x 10-33 cubic metres
Velocity: 1 furlong/fortnight = 1.663 x 10-4 metres/second
Force: 1 slugspat/winkblink = 1.135 x 1036 Newtons
Power: 1 pondspan/eon = 7.104 x 10-20 Watts
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