Whether you’re an electrical engineer or a mechanical one, work for a private company or a global enterprise, over the course of your career you’ll likely come across a unit of measurement (or two) that you’ve never heard of before.
The reason why can range from something new being discovered and thus, there being a need to quantify it with a form of measurement not previously defined, to simply a moment of humor by one engineer being picked up and formalized by others over the years.
The following is a short list of weird, humorous engineering terms and their descriptions – some are one-offs, heard only occasionally, while others are a bit more widely used, but maybe not as well known.
What is Donkey Power ?
This humorously titled engineering unit is recorded as 250 watts, which is about a third of a horsepower.
What is a Sagan ?
Defined as a large quantity of anything, the slang term was made as a humorous tribute to Carl Sagan and his frequent use of the catchphrase “billions and billions.”
What is a Mickey ?
Named after the Walt Disney cartoon character, a Mickey per second refers to the smallest resolvable unit of measurement for the speed and direction that a computer mouse pointing device is moved. Typically speaking, there are two measurements sends when the device is moved – one for the horizontal axis, and the other for the vertical; as such, device sensitivity is generally recorded in the number of mickeys per inch.
What is a Jiffy ?
Used on computer operating systems, a jiffy refers to the break of time between system timer interrupts. While it varies from system to system, it’s generally between 1 and 10 milliseconds.
What is a Lovelace ?
The measure of a system administrator’s opinion about how well / poorly / practical an operating system is implemented is measured as a Lovelace. Coined by system administrator professionals, one full Lovelace is considered a large quantity.
What is a KLOC ?
Pronounced as “kay-lok”, KLOC refers to kilo-lines of code, or thousand lines of code. It was in the past to suggest the amount of work required to create a piece of software – on average, one coder could write 20 lines of coder per workday, so a single KLOC of work would take 50 days, or 10 business weeks. Newer programs necessitate more / less lines of code to create software, so the KLOC is not as widely used nowadays.
What are FLOPS ?
FLOPs refer to FLoating point Operations Per Second, and they are a measure of computer’s processing power. The FLOP is often associated with other measurements, including kilo-, mega-, giga-, and tera-.
What is a Garn ?
The folks at NASA coined the term Garn, and it’s used to measure seasickness / travel sickness caused by space adaptation syndrome. It was (unfortunately for him) named after Senator Jake Garn, who was often sick during tests. One full Garn means the individually is completely incapacitated.
What is Light-Distance ?
Light-distance covers a few units of measurement, including light-mile and light-foot. George Gamow first introduced the concept, and it basically refers to the time taken for light to travel the specified unit distance. This is defined by reversing the procedure used in recording a light year.
What is a Meter of Water Equivalence ?
To measure the thickness of shielding for things like a nuclear reactor, particle accelerate, radiation detector, and more, a meter of water equivalence is used. A single MWE of material is the thickness of that material that provides the equivalent shielding of one meter of water.
What is a Shake ?
On the nuclear physics side of things, a shake refers to the time for a generation within a nuclear chain reaction — approximately 10 nanoseconds. It comes from the expression “two shakes of a lamb’s tail”, meaning quickly.
What is a Langley ?
To measure solar radiation, the Langley (named after Samuel Pierpont Langley) is often used. It is considered equal to one thermochemical calorie per square centimeter. Interestingly, its symbol—LY—is often confused with the symbol “ly”, which is used for “light-year.”
Check back for even more weird and humorous engineering measurements and terms.
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