As you will learn in school, different chemical reactions have different rates of reaction, which you need to know how to measure. But have you heard of these weird,  wonderful, and often very silly ways of measuring things?

Humans do like, and need to measure all sorts of things, and this dates back to ancient times. For example, people needed to be able to weigh food or figure out lengths, and standard agreed units were necessary. Today we have incredibly precise instruments and systems to measure all sorts. However, even in ancient civilisations, such as the Greeks and Romans, measurements were quite precise considering the equipment they had. For example, a foot in Ancient Rome, was strangely enough, equal to the size of an average man’s foot. And this is very close to the 12 inches which defines a foot today!

First up on our list of bizarre measurements is Poronkusema, which is a unit to measure distance. This is a Finnish word, and actually means how far a reindeer can walk without needing to stop for a toilet break! Or how about the Dol. Derived from dolor, the Latin word for pain – it is a unit for measuring pain. Proposed in the 1940’s, during studies on pain, one dol was described as one “just noticeable difference” in pain.

A barn-megaparsec is a combination of  two units, the barn and the megaparsec. The barn is a tiny unit of area, used in nuclear physics – one barn is about the area of a uranium nucleus. On the other hand, the megaparsec is a huge unit, measuring distances between galaxies. Ridiculously, put these together  – and you get a unit equivalent to about the volume of 2/3 of a teaspoon!