UKH

You know what I mean... "bigger than ten football pitches", "as heavy as 100 blue whales" etc.

I've just read one about an invasion of Chinese Mitten crabs that caught my eye.

"as big as a 10 inch dinner plate"

Why not just say "10 inches"? You must have to know how big 10 inches is to know how big a 10 inch dinner plate is... 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/14/scientists-build-traps-...

Maybe ive just woken up in a pedantic "old man yells at cloud" mood. 

But 10 inches could be a ruler (with a bit broken off) or a circle. The plate bit tells you it's a circle.

True, but you would also know crabs are all more or less crab shaped. Generally roundish. Crab like. Not ruler shaped. 

I know that some git will be along in a second to contradict that, and post a link to the lesser spotted Ruler Crab, unique in the crab kingdom because of its long, thin shape and amazing lack of dinner plate similarity. 

It's the pincer bit that bothers me. I think claws that can crush cars, or something, is what I need to know.

Most things are normally expressed in the units of 'Wales' or 'the Isle of Wight'.

The latter, of course - depending upon where you measure it - being about the size of a 12 mile crab.

No. London buses

There is a reason for this...   https://nationaltoday.com/national-grouch-day/

Used to take the kids crabbing regularly when we lived in Pembs, often used to catch saucer sized crustaceans   

https://images.app.goo.gl/bJFnZow8Qm6XpYnC6

"large boulder, the size of a small boulder" 

That was quite shellfish of you. 

If they're mitten crabs, you'd expect them to come in pairs.

Anyway, standard journalistic comparison units start with the thickness of a human hair, progress up through things being the size of Wales or Belgium and get all giddy when it comes to things in space.

T.

In Scotland it starts with male pubic hair (a bawhair) and I have heard Geordies using The Bastard as a unit of measurement; after a particularly arduous walk out of a Cairngorm blizzard, a Geordie friend turned to me and said, "Ye divven't get many o' them to the bastaad."

Only if they're dressed... 

And that's me all out of crab puns...althpugh I might be able to come up with some more at a pinch. 

Not much good for mountains. These are measured in "Arthur's Seats".

If we want to be really pedantic... let's say 25 cm please.

1 crab = 1/48 of a London bus, by length

If you want to be really, really pedantic then it would be 0.25m or 250mm.

Ah; but does that allow for the fact that buses don't go sideways - although crabs probably think that they do?

Only if you’re from Edinburgh.

Breadbox. Bigger than a breadbox or smaller than a breadbox. Tells you all you need to know.

Wonder if they can take off from a treadmill.... 

Thank you

And the route Shrike (E2 5c) on Cloggy is 225 shrike lengths long / high

My favourite read for the double-decker bus, the Albert Hall or the Wembley Stadium as example units of  dubious utility is chapter I/Quick Reference/Annoying units of David Mackay's Sustainable Energy - without the hot air. See p329

https://www.withouthotair.com/cI/page_328.shtml

No. When buses learn to fly we call them aeroplanes.

No. Airbus

If you want to be pedantic,😉 it should be 254mm

Death Boulders on UK crags are measured by the SI unit:  size of a microwave (presumably the oven )

Heavy objects get weighed in Elephants, either baby or adult as required

Large bodies of water are measured by the number of Olympic swimming

The standard unit of arduousity must be the length of a typical UKC thread when 2 or 3 of the regulars go toe to toe.

That could be a lot of Olympic swimming pools.... 

Lesser or great?

Do we need another dose of them?

Lesser, naturally! 

Thank you 

Hah! Never thought of that. Excellent.

You've reminded me of the first time I took an internal flight in the US - on which, I'm afraid, I shall elaborate. 1978. None of the three UK to US carriers at the time - BA, TWA and Panam - appeared to fly a direct route to Denver; or perhaps they did but simply didn't offer Standby/Budget/Apex/etc fares on that route. So four of us turned up in Chicago with a vague plan - mine, I should confess - of hiring a vehicle to drive the last thousand or so miles. This turned out to be a bad plan. We would need a one-way hire as we weren't returning via Chicago - for which we would have to wait about a day and part with an awful lot of money. Pondering the problem I wandered round the various internal carriers' desks to see if it would be possible to fly. To my surprise I found a flight leaving in a couple of hours; seats $60 per head. I couldn't believe it; with the very favourable exchange rate at the time that was about 30 quid, and for the four of us still a lot less than Plan A was going to cost. Unfamiliar with US air transport terminology, though, I got a bit nervous when the guy selling us the tickets started talking about 'Coach Class'; perhaps that was why it was so cheap! I thought I'd better check.

"Er - we do actually get an aeroplane, don't we?"

He didn't say anything; just looked at me like I was some sort of idiot.

You say that - but I was on a trip to Antwerp once and I assumed part of the trip was on an Airbus rather than the actual 'bus' that turned up. I was being met by colleagues who were at the airport whereas we were dropped in the centre of town (red light district). This was the days before mobiles. Booked into a local hotel who who were somewhat surprised we wanted the room for the whole night.... Much amusement from our hosts once they realised we'd stayed in the local knocking shop.

When I first started walking seriously hills and mountains were measured in marsbars, pasties or eccles cakes.  The unit of energy consumption was whichever of these types was current per hour

I think the important thing for hills and mountains is the cut off point between using feet and using metres. What are the cut off points between your snacks?

The phrase a 10 inch dinner plate means something to a lot of people, people who don't know what an inch is (there are a lot of them) understand the size of a dinner plate

If they said 250mm diameter I guarantee people will ask what diameter means. 

Probably pasties for 3000ft plus or multi day

In Switzerland fruity pastries per day till the sac can't hold any more

My 1st trip to Les Alpes, 1978, a tube of Nestles evaporated milk usually covered an Aiguille or two.

I seem to recall climbing the Wetterhorn on a bag of gummi bears

Alps can also be measured in Jaffa cakes

Quickie: what does diameter mean?  

Any fule kno it fer mesuring diamps

Double the radius. 

What do you use in Orkney? And as a unit of area, which island do you use rather than the Isle of Wight unit? Spoilt for choice!

It's a metric welshman isn't it?

And for smaller things I like to know how many would fill the Albert Hall (although I think Wembley Stadium is more commonly used)

I've seen shoe-box most commonly used.

Maybe condensed milk? That's what we enjoyed if i recall correctly.

Not sure I’ve ever actually heard anyone using an island as a unit of measurement.  

They’ve been used to measuring other things though - the phrase “Westray shower” meaning the application of deodorant rather than washing.

Population wise they are used, as are towns -about the size of Kirkwall or Stromness or Papay or whatever.

or an SI unit for durchfall

though a diacentimeter would be less serious

Don't you know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall?

I do now.

with really bad durchfall a single hole would fill amply

Doric (dialect of NE Scotland) can provide an excellent measure of numbers by using Puckles and Thochties.

Goes roughly like this.

Standard amount - A Puckle

A Fair Puckle - more than the standard amount

A Gey Puckle - lots more than the standard amount

A Pucklie - less than the standard amount

A Wee Pucklie - much less than a standard amount

A Thochtie - a small amount

A Wee Thochtie - a really small amount

A Micro-Thocht* - a really tiny amount

* This one might exist solely in my household.  It has an Orcadian equivalent “A Peedie Grain”

My dinner plates are 12 inches. That could cause chaos.

I've never been to the Isle of Wight so have no idea how big it feels. I've looked at it on a map and it appears to be smaller that the Isle of Man, which I also haven't been to. I have however been to Singapore and google tells me that it's 3 times bigger than the Isle of Wight, so for me a unit of 1/3 of a Singapore would work. Or 1/72 the size of Wales which I have also been to. 

I don't but 'they' do!

Does your wife also think they're 12 inches?

1/72 scale is 00 in railway modelling, so you could fit an accurate model of all the railways in Wales onto the Isle of Wight. 

interesting unit comparison from The Astronomer Royal for Scotland on the radio this morning, speaking about the Orionids.  ARfS  used a multiple (80 times???? not that it matters) of the speed you'd drive in a 30mph zone.  Rather poor indeed when she could have said it was approaching ten times (or whatever) the re-entry speed experienced by an Apollo crew coming back from the moon.  Easier to comprehend and much more of a relevant comparison.

I would have thought that the BBC could have chosen someone in a post involving better communicating science to the masses.

Has Sir Martin made the change? Very brave of him.

Does that mean they're moving at 2400mph and the re-entry speed of the Apollo crew was 240mph?

"Astronomer Royal for Scotland" 

You might have missed the news, but it's been a thing since Embra got its own Royal Observatory in 1834.

Interesting, thanks.  Just to put that into context with more common Scottish units, how many thochties to a bawhair?

Don't forget the most important measure, that of time itself. And the measure can be an actual point in time, or just a duration of time.

That measure is "drectly". For example...

When will x be done by? Answer....drectly. 

Or, how long will you take to do x?....Answer....I will do it drectly.

Surprised the measure isn't used more widely in quantum physics?

But surely they'd never see anything through all that rain and mist?

Brilliant

I tend to think of it in miles per second but effectively yes.  Apollo Re-entry I seem to remember is in the order of 5-6 miles per second (ish) (Apollo 10 had the highest speed) and the meteors I think are travelling over 40 miles per second.  My figure of 10 times is a little too high but it still gives me an inkling - from here to Silloth in a second (as the road lies)

mph for Apollo, in excess of 21000?

Fridge is the preferred* unit on Cadair Idris.

* in terms of description. Not in terms of actually displacing lumps of rock...

Gert massive/huge/lush in the west country. 

That's holes.

That's HO Wales  then...?

[Well, it seems Airfix were lying to me with their HO/OO figures: HO is apparently 1:87, not 1:72. Odd, given that all their models were 1:72...]

A totally mind boggling useless measure of energy from this week’s New Scientist.

“powerful enough to microwave a bowl of popcorn twice the size of the sun”

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2398539-a-blast-of-radio-waves-hit-ear...

That is really ignorant.  How long would it remain "the size of the sun"?  That mass would surely contract while it was heating?

There’s a surprisingly large amount of academic literature on the physics/chemistry of popcorn. It’s a big industry worth around $2.5 billion/yr in the USA alone so I guess there’s a fair bit of money around to do the research on how to maximise profits.

But, just from Wikipedia, unpopped popcorn kernels contain around 14-20% moisture and expand by around 20 to 50 times when popped. The moisture turns to steam when heated and pops the kernels at around 180*C.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn#:~:text=A%20popcorn%20kernel's%20st....

I suspect the result of a sudden heating of a mass of popcorn with twice the diameter of the Sun would result in the equivalent of a popcorn supernova with very unpredictable outcomes as gravity battles against the huge expansion of a large mass of water vapour and organic matter.

It would certainly make a mess of any orbiting Earth like planets!

It might even merit a mention in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!

This sounds like something that should be posed to the XKCD chappie.

C / 2 π

My husband does.

Great!

That’s because relative time (or speed) is measured in wiggles, eg “you’ll need to get a wiggle on”. Most often used when the object of the measurement cannot be measured due to uncertainty.