necro-uom-icon
units-of-measure for smarties
Major Systems
sorted by relevance according to a nonentity
International System of Units
i'll call it the metric system, it is abbreviated as SI (from the French Système International d'Unités). If we had to pick a single system, this would be our best bet. What it lacks in whimsy, it makes up for in coherence.
English Units of Measurement
England's measurement system, abandonware since 1826, but the mother system of Imperial and USCS
Imperial
the post-1824 measures used in the British Empire and countries in the British sphere of influence
United States Customary System
freedom units, I'll call them USCS.
Gripes on the major systems and software menus - A lot of software in the world with a single UOM option will only let you pick between Metric or Imperial. Maybe this is suitable if you are living in a confused time in England, where diferent systems are used in different situations. This is admittedly fine for a couple of cases(mph vs. kph, Celsius vs. Fahrenheit) but it is un-American for you(iPhone®) to make me pick British units for my weather. Luckily Apple® now lets you pick between Metric, UK, and US units(on my phone at least). Imperial units are different than freedom units. Most notably, the Imperial volumes are about 20[%] more voluminous compared to the USCS versions(and they don't use cups, they use gills which are 1/4 of an Imperial pint, not to be confused with the USCS gill, which is 4 fluid ounces).
Other Systems
You won't find these in the iPhone® menu, but they are still pretty cool
cgs
centimeters, grams, seconds, often used in the medical sciences
mks
meters, kilograms, seconds, basically engineering units of the metric system
fps
foot, pound, second, used in the U.S., Liberia, and Myanmar
English Engineering Units
USCS, but with extra steps. lbm or slugs for mass, lbf for force
Farming Units
Bushels, pecks, bales, dry pints, acres, hectares
Nautical Units
Nautical mile(exactly 1852 meters), knots(1 nautical mile per hour), fathom(depth, exactly 6 feet)
Electrical Engineering
- Ampere – Electric current
- Volt – Unit of voltage, electric potential difference, electromotive force
- Ohm – Electrical resistance, impedance, reactance
- Watt – Unit of electric power
- Volt-Ampere – Apparent electric power
- Var – Reactive electric power
- Farad – Electric capacitance
- Henry – Electric inductance
- Coulomb – Electric charge
- Siemens – Electrical conductance, admittance
- Weber – Magnetic flux
- Tesla – Magnetic flux density
- Hertz - Frequency / cycles per second(like refresh rate of your computer monitor)
- Joule – Energy, work
Computer Memory
Most notably, metric prefixes can be used, but we also like to use powers of 1024 instead of 1000, and we incorrectly call things 1 KB instead of KiB all the time. Usually powers of 1000 are used for storage and powers of 1024 are used for memory.
- bit - The fundamental unit of information in computing. It can be one of two values(0 or 1, 0V or 5V, etc.)
- crumb - 2 bits
- nibble - 4 bits
- byte - 8 bits
- kilobyte(KB) - 1000 bytes
- kibibyte(KiB) - 1024 bytes
- megabyte(MB) - 1000^2 bytes
- mebibyte(MiB) - 1024^2 bytes
- gigabyte(GB) - 1000^3 bytes
- gibibyte(GiB) - 1024^3 bytes
- ...this goes on for while(terabyte, petabyte, exabyte, zettabyte, yottabyte, ronabyte, quettabyte) and the base 2 versions
Anthropometric Units
Hands, feet, cubits, pace, span, inch, fathom(a person's wingspan)