Talk:List of non-coherent units of measurement/Archive 3

The jigger doesn't vary, at least not in the US. It's defined as 1.5 US fluid ounces. I'll see if I can find a source. Kendall-K1 (talk) 21:07, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

It's also a standard measurement defined within the traditional English system of units and the US customary system of units, and as such is specifically excluded from this article. Traditional "English" and foreign units are specifically excluded because otherwise the article length would be excessively long Rhialto (talk) 11:20, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Metric ounce, food labelling ounce, shot glasss... all three are basically the same unit. Can we merge the two sections for these please? Rhialto (talk) 12:50, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, I'll see what I can do, although as defined here the "shot glass" is not a set amount so maybe I'll leave that for now. What do you think? By the way thanks for sorting the entries. I made them alphabetical because they didn't appear to be in any particular order, but order by size is better I think. I put in a comment. Kendall-K1 (talk) 19:38, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I took out jigger. But I think maybe we should just remove the "shot glass" section instead of merging it since there are no sources. Kendall-K1 (talk) 19:42, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Shot glass can easily just be a sentence or three under the metric ounce header. It's historical origin is from the ounce anyway. fwiw, the Uk legally defines a shot of spirits as 25 ml, which is just another metric ounce. Rhialto (talk) 06:53, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

otoh, if there truly isn't any objective way to define it, then it is merely a figure of speech, and as such it shouldn't be here at all. Rhialto (talk) 07:46, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think the US defines the shot glass but if it's defined as 25 ml in the UK then it should go in the metric ounce section. Kendall-K1 (talk) 13:53, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Does the stere really belong here? It doesn't seem to fit the definition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kendall-K1 (talk • contribs) 12:53, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

I'd say no —Tamfang (talk) 20:30, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

The "finger" as a unit of liquid measure is common in the US. Professional barmen here do not normally measure liquor with any kind of instrument, they just eyeball it. There's even an article on Finger (unit), with references. I guess I'd be inclined to add it back to this article, with the references. Kendall-K1 (talk) 03:08, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

On second thought I'm going to leave it out. There are three references at Finger (unit). One is 150 years old, one is from a piece of fiction, and the last describes using fingers as a method for measuring a jigger of whiskey, not as a unit in itself. I would still support putting it back in but only with proper sources (which I'm too lazy to dig up myself). Kendall-K1 (talk) 17:48, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Often when people post things on the image hosting site Imgur and a scale is needed, a banana is provided for size comparison. If a banana is not available, an adult male named "José" can suffice. This unit of scaling was developed through memes and popular culture, so I'm not sure if this is notable enough for inclusion. --BurritoBazooka (talk) 14:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

One human often used for size comparison is the smoot, which is included in the list of humorous units of measurement, and so it is not appropriate here (no need). I'm thinking the José is along the same lines. —GraemeMcRae^talk 17:45, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Someone might want to check the numbers in the "Tall buildings" section. I checked a couple against their WP articles and they didn't match. For example we give 449 m for the Empire State Building, but the article gives 373, 381, or 443 for heights to various points. Kendall-K1 (talk) 15:02, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I'm not all that sure the section belongs here at all. Figures of speech and comparisons (such as "thinner than a human hair") have previously been removed. The essential cite to show that something is a unit of measurement is a line that says something is, for example, "three empire state buildings high". "Taller/shorter than the empire state building" is just a comparison, and doesn't show the building to be a unit of measurement. Rhialto (talk) 15:25, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I would go along with removing it. Here in the US, especially in newspapers, it's common to see, "three football fields long" but I can't remember ever seeing "three empire state buildings high". Google backs this up, no results on the first page for Empire State Building, but for football fields we have "New Maryland casino is 3 football fields long", "Police Discover 2 Football Fields Worth Of Pot", "Asteroid 3 football fields long going by Earth tonight", "Duluth Aerial Lift Bridge and shipping canal... more than three football fields long", "The Titanic was 882 feet long, which is almost three football fields", and "Nearly three football fields long, ...the Iowa is one of the biggest warships ever built" all on the first page of results. Interestingly enough, there are also several "ask.com" type queries from people wanting to know the conversion factor between football fields and standard units, which makes me wonder why we don't just use the standard units. Kendall-K1 (talk) 17:39, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Anyway it's pretty funny that the Empire State image has the tag. 'The Empire State Building is one Empire State Building tall[citation needed]' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.76.106.32 (talk) 13:39, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

We need a reference to show that boatload is means anything specific, and is more than just slang. See wiktionary:boatload and Merriam-Webster. – Wbm1058 (talk) 15:15, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

I would say "Boatload" belongs in the article titled:Indefinite and fictitious numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indefinite_and_fictitious_numbers#General_placeholder_namesMisterHOP (talk) 10:17, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

In The Netherlands, the "morgen", literally "morning", was used in the past as a unit of area. It was the area of land which could be ploughed by a single farmer in half a day. Local variations existed, the size was a bit less than 10,000 square meters. Did a similar unit exist in English speaking countries? If yes, it may be a good candidate for this page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.169.80.244 (talk) 21:41, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

The acre is an equivalentanalogous unit of measure. --Belg4mit (talk) 00:39, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Actually morgen it is :-) Staszek Lem (talk) 17:43, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

This article is specifically about unusual units of measure in English-speaking countries, not unusual units in non-anglophone countries, and not historical units of measure. A historical unit of measure from a non-anglophone country is well outside the scope of this article. Rhialto (talk) 16:15, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

"This article is specifically about unusual units of measure in English-speaking countries, not unusual units in non-anglophone countries, and not historical units of measure." I don't see anything in the title or Talk Page that would justify that statement. Heavenlyblue (talk) 21:02, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Don't forget that New Netherland (and especially New Amsterdam) was a foundational part of the future United States. Any farmers there would in all likelihood have used this unit. And, since the linguistic transition was gradual after the English conquest, there would probably have been farmers using the term during the period when the colony would have been officially described as 'English-speaking'. Heavenlyblue (talk)

This adds even more weight to the argument. [From Morgen]:

"Until the advent of metrication in the 1970s, the morgen was the legal unit of measure of land in three of the four pre-1995 South African provinces - the Cape Province, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. In November 2007 the South African Law Society published a conversion factor of 1 Morgen = 0.856 532 Hectares to be used for the conversion of areas from imperial units to metric, particularly when preparing consolidated diagrams by compilation."

As you no doubt know, English is an official language of South Africa, and I don't think that the 1970s would be considered "historical" in this context. Heavenlyblue (talk) 20:02, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Under the title schoenis Wikipedia gives it as an Egyptian measure recorded by the Greeks. Herodotus 2.6 "schoine, which is an Egyptian measure, is equal to sixty furlongs" 2.149 "The measure of its circuit is three thousand six hundred furlongs (being sixty schoines), and this is the same number of furlongs as the extent of Egypt itself along the sea." (furlong = stadion)

Herodotus gives it as as equal to their own measure of the schoenus 60 stadia where a stadion was 600 pous or feet, 1/8 mia chillia or thousand orguia or paces of 6 pous.

Pliny as 40 stadia

Pliny the Elder 5.11 "Other writers say that it is forty schoeni in length, making the schoenum to be thirty stadia" Pliny the Elder 12.53 "schoenus patet Eratosthenis ratione stadia XL" (Eratosthenes says: schoenus = 40 stadia).

strabo as 30 schœnum (or half scoenis). and Strabo as Strabo 17.1.24 "according to Artemidorus, the voyage up the river is twenty-eight schoeni, that is, eight hundred and forty stadia, reckoning the schoenus as thirty stadia. When I made the voyage, however, they used different measures at different times when they gave the distances, so that even forty stadia, or still more, was the accepted measure of the schoenus, according to the place. That the measure of the schoenus among the Aegyptians in unstable is made clear by Artemidorus himself in his next statement; for from Memphis to Thebai each schoenus, he says, is one hundred and twenty stadia, and from Thebai to Syene sixty, and, as one sails up from Pelusium to the same vertex of the Delta, the distance, he says, is twenty-five schoeni, that is, seven hundred and fifty stadia, using the same measure" Pilot Pirx (talk) 18:01, 29 September 2012 (UTC)142.0.102.157 (talk) 18:13, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm surprised not to see "rods" and "chains" listed as distance measures. Jack Waugh (talk) 14:42, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

That's because they are historical units that no longer see regular modern use; this page specifically excludes historical units (as well as units not used in anglophone countries) because otherwise the page would become impossibly long. Chains and furlongs (but not rods) used to see use in the UK rail industry until about a decade ago, but no longer. Rhialto 14:51, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Chains are still pretty commonly used. They belong here. We also have morgen and acre-foot, but no acre. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:32, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Do you have any cites that indicate modern usage (as opposed to conversion for curiosity's sake or encyclopaedic knowledge cites)? I should point out that just because one unit is listed here, does not imply that any other unit should be, no matter how similar. Sometimes, that may actually present a convincing case to remove the first one, not to add the second. Rhialto 13:24, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Cites?, no, because that involves the legwork research that we never have enough time for. However I can look out of my house windows and see two lots of building work going on. One is railway, where the conventional unit for curvature radius is still the chain (and is spray marked on platform edges etc) and the other is some minor domestic building where a jobbing builder has set out with chains as they presumably don't have the budget for a laser total station. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:43, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

No cites means it's inherently not appropriate for wikipedia. A physical chain can be used to measure things in metres, yards, or toktobolots. The physical nature of the measuring device has no bearing on the units it is actually measuring something out in. (When I use a ruler, I measure the paper in inches, not in rulers.) Now at least in the UK, chains do still exist as place markers on railway lines; they aren't used to measure things so much as identify locations from things that were measured decades (or even centuries) ago, and they certainly don't see use to measure any new place markers on new line construction. Rhialto 14:01, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

"No cites means it's inherently not appropriate for wikipedia." What nonsense. I don't think "inherently" means what you think it does.

Chains measure in chains. Their link length and the label tags are chosen on that basis. A continuous tape can be labelled in either metres or yards, a chain has to choose one set of mutually compatible graduations (i.e. links). No doubt metric chains with half metre links were made for Napoleon, but here in the UK, chains still have imperial links.

I don't know how one would measure a radius of curvature in degrees. Railways (UK) were generally constructed and laid out in chains, with signal positioning rules, minimum radius curves for particular long rolling stock measured likewise. That sort of division doesn't go away with metrication. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:12, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Rods and chains are outside the explicit scope of this article, "a unit of measurement that does not form part of a coherent system of measurement; especially in that its exact quantity may not be well known or that it may be an inconvenient multiple or fraction of base units in such systems.". The chain is an integer multiple of the yard and of the rod, while the furlong and mile are integer multiples of the chain; as imperial units go, such multiples are not at all inconvenient. As for the exact quantities, while they may not be taught in most schools, they are known and both fixed and easy to ascertain. NebY (talk) 14:15, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

So chains are "well known"?

Why is the (highly obscure) Furman here, when its whole raison d'etre is for being a binary round number fraction (i.e. simple integer multiples) of a circle?

Why do we list morgen here, but not acre? Why acre-foot, but not acre? Andy Dingley (talk) 15:37, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Did I say chains are well-known? Does the lead paragraph say the units should or should not be well-known? How would you rewrite the lead paragraph to admit chains and rods? Which other units listed in Imperial units would you include? Does the spirit of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS apply to your questions about morgen and acre-foot? Or to just directly address the issue, why in the light of your above claims that the chain remains in ordinary use and in the light of its place in the family of imperial units of length, do you think the chain and the rod should be listed alongside the horse and the block? NebY (talk) 18:06, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

wp:cite is the policy that says everything must be cited, or at least citeable. If something has no cite, the only valid reason should be that the editor is in the process of adding the cite.

Now, rods, chains, furlongs, and so on are standard members of the imperial system of units, hence their exclusion from this article. The same goes for the acre. Acre-foot get through because it combined two existing units to create a new third unit (of volume). Morgen is here because it is not a standard unit in a consistent codified scheme, but is (at least within living memory) a unit that has seen standardised albeit specialised usage in an anglophone land. Furman is here again because it sees usage in an anglophone land, and is not the usual unit of angular measure (which would be degrees, minutes, and seconds).

Regarding those measuring chains you saw, yes, traditionally they would have been built so that a single link in that chain was a standard imperial link (unit of length) long. But there's no reason to assume that any random chain on a building site, even if it is being used as a measuring device, was constructed to that standard. They might just as easily be 10 cm links instead. Unless you have a citeable source that can be independently verified, it's hearsay, and therefore not valid as a data source for wikipedia. Rhialto 18:41, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Please note that www.quora.com is entirely driven by user-generated content, and as such is not a valid source for any information content, except conceivably in an article about that site itself, and to identify the topic of such an article. Rhialto (talk) 14:17, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. If it's bad as a ref, it's even worse as an EL.

Mind you, I still think there's scope for something on oxen-based measurement. Not exactly short on sources either. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:24, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

"Centipawn" states: "Loss of a pawn will therefore typically lose that player 100 centipawns (which is usually enough to lose the game)." If that is so in chess software, the software barely resembles the physical game, where loss of a mere pawn is very unlikely to have a major effect on the outcome. Then, if "chess software will often rate the better of two moves within a few centipawns of each other", the first statement has to be wrong. Up to someone who uses chess software ... --Wikiain (talk) 03:50, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

A loss of a pawn is indeed usually enough to lose a game when the game is played as a sufficiently high level of competence. Garamond Lethet
c 04:06, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

The entry is not that well written to be honest. "Loss of a pawn" is not equivalent to a net score of minus 100 centipawns because 1. it depends on the position of the pawn and other pieces, as stated earlier in the entry; and 2. loss of a pawn does not happen in isolation - hence exchanging a pawn for any other piece would clearly often be an advantageous move and not "usually be enough to lose the game". Btljs (talk) 13:11, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Steve Allen's line, "Is it bigger than a breadbox?". It became a common unit of measure in guessing games. This could go in Humourous Units of Measure, but it has changed from comedy to a common phrase. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.149.26.160 (talk) 04:35, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

"bigger than an X" indicates that X is used to compare something, but not that it's a true unit of measure. For that, you should be able to find cites saying that something is "five Xs in size" Rhialto (talk) 20:09, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree with 68.149.26.160. Breadbox should be on here. I don't believe that the five X test is a good test for stuff being on this list. pbp 20:05, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Back in 2006 there was a discussion of what should be in the article, and there was a consensus that comparative expressions such as "bigger than a breadbox" or "small than a bee's dick" or "faster than a speeding bullet"£ should be excluded, because they are never actually used to measure anything; they are figures of speech or poetic ways of comparing things, but not actual measures. I welcome a fresh discussion, but I expect the consensus is likely to remain the same unless sockpuppets are involved. Rhialto 21:03, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

We're having this discussion right now, and at the present time, you're outvoted, 2-1. Furthermore, "breadbox" isn't a figure of speech...it's literal, and based on a general idea of how big a breadbox is. pbp 23:08, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

WP:NOT#DEM Wikipedia is not a democracy. It's not about votes, it's about reasoned debate. "Votes" don't come into it. Rhialto (talk) 04:59, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

fwiw, I'm not saying those these figures of speech don't deserve either their own article or being collected into an article that covers such figures of speech. However, they are qualitatively different from actual units of measurement. Rhialto (talk) 05:27, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

What is the measure for sockpuppets? "Cubits of fluff"? Btljs (talk) 13:18, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

I oppose the removal of Breadbox from this list. It is a common comparative measurement of volume. pbp 20:02, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm old enough to remember Steve Allen's use of "bigger than a breadbox" on tv and I think there is something fundamental missing from all these discussions about measures.

Most units of measure are simply linear (in the sense of normal arithmetic multiplication). Measurements in linear units can be compared arithmetically. The 10 nm width of a chip etch can be compared with the width of the galaxy, typically expressed in light years or whatever. This is scientific measurement and the units of measure, in some sense, don't really matter. Of course, the purpose of this page is to collect odd measures in common use and appropriate for various purposes, and it is certainly worthwhile to encyclopediate [neologism?] them.

But the use of breadbox is somewhat different in an important sense. First an anecdote: 45 years ago I [B] was standing at sunset with a colleague [A] on the south rim of the Grand Canyon.

[A] Wow!  That's big!
[B] Yeah!  But how big is it?
[A] How could we measure it?
[B] We could determine how many standard unit breadboxes it takes to fill it up.
[A] Yes, but mining the materials for that many breadboxes would probably require digging another hole that big or bigger.
[B] Indeed!

After more consideration we decided making the measurement was impractical for us poor students and abandoned making the measurement.

BTW, at the time we did have _the_ Standard Unit Breadbox in our apartment back on the East Coast.

While true, this anecdote is farcical, and that's the point! No one ever has or ever will use a breadbox as a linear unit of measure. The "bigger than a breadbox" measure is a different, but a genuine and useful kind of measure.

Consider the kinds of sizes and distances with which a primitive (non-scientist) human must deal. They range from a grain of salt, or perhaps smaller, to the distance one can walk (or ride) in a day. One can fit a grain of salt, or a baseball or apple, or a loaf of bread, into a breadbox. One cannot fit a baseball bat, or a refrigerator, or a horse, or a Boeing 787, or the island of Manhattan into a breadbox. I propose that the breadbox, whether considered as a proxy for linear dimension, for volume, or for bulk, is somewhere vaguely in the middle of the logarithmic range of size a human might have to deal with. Therefore as a first determinant question establishing the conceptual size of a thing, "is it bigger than a breadbox" is an appropriate question.

Nearly all the standard scientific and engineering systems of measure are linear. But intuitive human conceptions of measurement are closer to logarithmic. (Consider also musical pitch, sound loudness, intensity of light.) Whether or not the Standard Unit Breadbox belongs on tis Unusual Units of Measure page, it ought be recognized that it does not operate with the same linear dimensional scaling as smidges, chains, rods, cubits. It operates on a crude (probably) logarithmic human perception scale. While it is reasonable and understandable to ask if an object is "bigger than a breadbox", it would be questionable and probably meaningless to ask whether something is "bigger than 5.7 breadboxes."

I wonder if there are other human measurement systems that are informally logarithmic. If so, and if these measurement units are a named class, they would deserve their own page on Wikipedia. (If not, an encyclopedia is supposed to record accepted knowledge, not a place publish or even propose original research.) Anyone have any references to existing informal nonlinear measurement systems? Wolfamade (talk) 06:10, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Does the Refrigeration Ton belong here? I had the impression it was a standard unit in the US, like the pint or the pound. Kendall-K1 (talk) 13:52, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

I suspect your impression is wrong. Pints and pounds are base units; Refrigeration tons are derived units. And considering its a unit of power, its certainly an unusual way to name it. On the face of it, it would appear to be a unit of weight or mass, not power. Rhialto (talk) 09:52, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-20/surveyors-find-exact-measurements-of-melbourne-cricket-ground/6709520 175.45.116.64 (talk) 04:26, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

done. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:52, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

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We need conversions for Kan and Cow's grass. The text implies the Kan is 36-64 square feet but doesn't actually say that. If we don't know what these units are, they probably don't belong here.

Also I wonder if the Brass and the Square are the same thing. They are the same size, and the Brass comes from India so it seems reasonable it would have derived from the Square, which is Imperial. Kendall-K1 (talk) 14:32, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

The "conversions" section of User:Guy Macon/On the Diameter of the Sewer cover in front of Greg L’s house could use a few more entries. I am sure that you all agree that User:Greg L/Sewer cover in front of Greg L’s house contains absolutely vital information that the Encyclopædia Britannica somehow overlooked... --Guy Macon (talk) 17:20, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

From my recollection of this unit, it is pre-metric, and a conversion factor of 493 GL was given for it. This equates to 400,000 acre-feet.

An article in the undated paper gave a 2004 remeasurement of the harbour as being 562,000 ML, and a 1960s measure as "about 500,000 ML". However, since Australia did not go metric until 1973, I suspect that "about 500,000 ML" is 400,000 acre-feet (ie 493 GL), and this measurement is given as a 'olympic pool is 2 acrefeet (1/200,000 Sydharbs)'.--Wendy.krieger (talk) 05:31, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

We have three sources for 500 Gl and none for acre-feet. If you have another source we could give both units. Or we could convert from 500 Gl. Kendall-K1 (talk) 11:44, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I have removed all the examples from the "tall buildings" section that lacked a source because virtually any tall structure is used in this way; we could have an endless list. I left in the Empire State Building because it has an accompanying photo, but I wouldn't mind if it was lost, too. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 00:44, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I approve. I wouldn't leave in the Empire State Building just because it has a photo. I added a bunch of photos a while back just to brighten up an otherwise drab article. There is nothing special about that photo. Kendall-K1 (talk) 01:15, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I reverted the recent addition of "sigma." It doesn't seem to me that's a unit of measurement. Although we do include "nines" so maybe it is. But if it is, it doesn't seem "unusual" to me. Kendall-K1 (talk) 16:01, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Would "ten-foot pole", as in "I wouldn't touch that with a ten-foot pole", qualify as an unusual unit of measurement (length)? I've also heard the variation "eleven-foot pole". — Loadmaster (talk) 23:28, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

I would call it an idiom; not a unit of measurement. It's not like football fields or other things are described as "thirty ten-foot poles long," so it's not really a unit of measurement.

(On variations, there's also the thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole!) TJRC (talk) 00:01, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

• Yes, idiom, doesn't belong. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:36, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

This is not true - I am from former USSR and old enough to live under communist rules and I NEVER heard such allegory. Reference 29 is to article in local newspaper and indeed it says that "we said as two Frances", but they refer to very specific region beyond polar circle that has nothing to do to whole Siberia. Second reference (30) does not work at all and it actually someone's blog - far away from being "trustable reference". Siberia is much bigger than two Frances.59.154.53.121 (talk) 02:10, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for catching that. The first source does give one example, but we can not conclude from that "France is often used as a comparison", only that it has been used at least once. The second source is dead but as you say it's a blog. I have removed the France entry. Kendall-K1 (talk) 03:14, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

See explanation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatami — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.103.161.1 (talk) 18:22, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Absolutely not. This was discussed at length a few years ago, and the consensus was that any unit from a non-anglophone country, simply because it is from a non-anglophone country, would be "unusual". However, including them all would make the list impossibly large in short order, so the decision was made that they should either have their own article or be part of an article dealing specifically with all units of that country. In order to keep this list to a manageable length, part of the criteria is that it must be a unit native to an anglophone community. Rhialto (talk) 20:36, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

About when did the term 'Sydharb' come into use? One informal source I know says it was with the construction of the Ord River Scheme, in the early 1970s. Some PR genius came up with the word as a way of giving city-folks some conception of the extent of the project. Is this so? Or was it the coinage of some inspired engineer? I recall a pumping engineer, around the year 1969, describing the capacity of a pump he was using for some project: 'It could pump out Sydney Harbour in a day.' But he didn't use the word 'Sydharb'. Bluedawe 22:49, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

In the archives, there's a discussion where one editor says he found it in his "1981 edition of the Macquarie Dictionary". Perhaps someone with a copy of that dictionary (or access to its paid-subscription-only online site) can see if it gives a citation for earliest use.

The OED lists neither "sydharb" nor "sydarb". TJRC (talk) 23:09, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

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Its formula ${\displaystyle d_{n}=0.005~\mathrm {inch} \times 92^{\frac {36-n}{39}}}$ seems to make American wire gauge an excellent candidate --HeWhoMowedTheLawn (talk) 09:49, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Reading through the American wire gauge article, it doesn't appear to actually be a unit of measurement. Rather, it is a standard for saying exactly what size a specific class of tools or equipment should be built to. It's not like people say thing such as "It needs to be two hundred AWG 13 in diameter" (or something grammatically similar). Rhialto (talk) 10:12, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

I've never heard of the football field as a unit of length. However, media use it all the time as a unit of area. For example the rain forest loss is often expressed as football fields per day. It's also linguistically and mathematically more logical tu use it as a unit of area rather than length. A football field is a rectangle, not a line, which defies an area and has two sides with different lengths. Does anyone have a source that the usage for area is more common and perhaps more correct? PizzaMan (♨♨) 21:50, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

While I have heard of something being described as "covering an area equal to 'X' football fields", I much more commonly hear a football field used as a unit of length ("The shot was made from a distance of 1000 yards. Over three football fields away.").--Khajidha (talk) 16:21, 22 October 2017 (UTC)