Whats the most unique engineering unit you've encountered? 5

[JGard1985]

For fun, what is the most unique engineering unit you've encountered in your years?

Some considerations:
[ul]
[li]Name[/li]
[li]Units that mixing and matching english and metric[/li]
[li]Usefulness & practicality[/li]
[/ul]

My two first nominations:
[ul]
[li]KW/foot: A mix & match of english & metric, its used in the commercial nuclear power industry. The unit is a of measure of the amount of energy produced in metric, per linear foot of fuel rod. The calculation is important for evaluating the heat transfer capacity to the water in the reactor. Too much energy will result in fuel clad damage, compromising the integrity of the first fission barrier [/li]
[li]slinch: The slinch is an english unit of mass equal to 1 lbf*sec^2/in. (Think Weight divided by 386.6in/sec^2) In my opinion it has almost no practical application except for use in the mass input for english-unit based Finite Element Models.[/li]
[/ul]

Excited to hear your nominees

Jeff
Pipe Stress Analysis
Finite Element Analysis

http://www.xceed-eng.com

 

[drawoh]

I recall many, many years ago when we were given pressure in the units of Torr. There was no internet back then, so it took us quite a while to figure out that a Torr was (supposed to be) a millimeter of mercury.

--
JHG

 

[crossframe]

Figanewtons and Boxafiganewtons, from my Holtz and Kovacs Geotechnical Engineering textbook (see attached file). Never encountered it the real world, but it must exist because it's in a textbook.

And I once had a young engineer give me a quantity in "Gallons of Bridge Rail."

 

[SnTMan]

And people say engineers have no sense of humor...

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

 

[IRstuff]

"And people say engineers have no sense of humor..."

The fact that we think a thread about engineering units is funny pretty much confirms that ;-)

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[JohnRBaker]

How about a 'Bucket of Shims'?

I just remembered that when I still worked in 'hard engineering' (before I changed careers and moved to software in 1980) we manufactured large pieces of machinery for commercial bakeries. These machines were shipped in pieces and erected (assembled) on-site. Since most of the framework was fabricated from welded structural shapes and set-up on existing concrete floors, we provided what we called a 'U-shim', a square piece of stainless steel in various thicknesses with an open-ended slot/notch on one side of the shim so that they could be installed between mated parts without having to completely remove the bolts by simply loosening the fasteners and sliding in as many shims as needed to square-up a frame or assure proper alignment with the next piece of equipment. These were made in various thicknesses from scrap pieces in the sheet-metal shop (we had a small press set-up all the time to make these, when guys had nothing else to do and there was scrape laying around) and they were packaged in sturdy plastic buckets, each holding approximately 25 lbs of shims and that's how they went into inventory. So for each machine shipped there would be an item on the Bill of Material for a 'Bucket of Shims'. It had a part number and even a 'drawing', a size 'A' sheet with the words "ONE BUCKET OF SHIMS" written on the face of the drawing and a parts list to account for the plastic bucket and 25 lbs of stainless steel.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

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[CheckerHater]

"Eaches" as in "Each item shipped separately"

Sold in eaches.

"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert"
Arthur C. Clarke Profiles of the future

 

[dik]

Not a unit, but I did a carved balsa sign support in Lindsay for the theatre and at the first meeting, where the contractor, the architect and myself were present, the contractor commented that the documents were great but he had a question... He asked, "what's a thingamajig." I asked why and he said it was spec'd on the drawing, and sure enough it was there.

When the draftsman was preparing the drawings, he asked what this thing was that a cable looped around to distribute the load and keep from crushing the cable... I didn't know at the time, so, replied that it was some sort of thingamajig... and he put it on the documents. I thought it was really funny, but, the Architect went ballistic, for no real reason. I later found out it was called a thimble.

Dik

 

[berkshire]

Dik,
It was a thimble eh, and you did not sew with it ?
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[dik]

berkshire... it bothered me a bit that the Architect went ballistic, his reaction was a reflection of work prepared on his drawing titles... I could only sit back...

Dik

 

[fel3]

Back when I took 3rd semester physics in college (1977), a buddy and I worked through converting furlongs per fortnight to parsecs per picosecond, rather than listen to the prof drone on about something that was probably important.

Now Google can tell me that 1.00 furlong per fortnight equals 5.38974 x 10^-33 parsecs per picosecond. And, of course, the inverse is 1.00 parsecs per picosecond equals 1.855 x 10^32 furlongs per fortnight.

==========
"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill

 

[BrianPetersen]

The only odd unit that I'm familiar with is machine shop terminology for "a wee little bit".

Unfortunately, the name of that unit is probably not family friendly although I'm sure other people with shop backgrounds know exactly what unit I'm talking about ... Can we say it here? Ain't gonna be me ...

 

[zeusfaber]

Could this be the one that Humph Lyttleton used to bowdlerize as "a gnat's crotchet"?

A.

 

[GregLocock]

To be honest I'd be railing about most unique which is an abuse of language.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[dik]

In Winnipeg, due to the condition of our roads... we have potholes/kilometer. Does that count?

Dik

 

[btrueblood]

Agree with Greg. Should be "uniquest".

 

[cranky108]

In some parts of the US we have potholes/mile. I guess that would be a quality measurement of the paving, or of the budget office.

 

[Sparweb]

Cranky,
In Canada, the potholes are 1.6 times bigger than in the USA, so the distance unit comes out in the wash(board).


STF

 

[waross]

I used to teach the three states of binary.
To use the coin analogy, the three states were Heads, tails and "In your pocket".
The course was a hands-on approach to designing and then wiring solid state logic devices.
When the circuit was unpowered, the memories and registers were "In your pocket".
When the circuit was powered up, the state of these devices was indeterminate.
The point was that when you powered up your circuit, you needed an initial reset signal to set the memories and registers to a known state.
It's always fun to explain the three states of binary to one of the 10 kinds of people who understand binary.
I could have taught Zero, One and Indeterminate but "In your pocket" was more likely to be remembered.
If, in the future, some students remembered the silly instructor who taught the three states of binary, great, they still remember the lesson.
Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[EdStainless]

Not a unit but notation, and one that has changed.
@ originally meant 'at each' , as in 12 @ $2.34, the each matters.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, Plymouth Tube

 

[cranky108]

In some cases of binary, the third state is, the last known state, because the existing state is indeterminate.