Thursday, August 20, 2009

What I Learned in College Physics

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A beard-second, inspired by the light-year and especially useful in the short distances common in nuclear physics, is the amount of distance a physicist’s beard grows in one second. Experimentally measured between 100 angstroms and 2.5 nanometers.

A sheppey is a measure of distance equal to about 7/8 of a mile, defined as the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque.

1 millihelen is the amount of beauty needed to launch a single ship. (Think Homer.)

A megaFonzie is a fictional unit of measurement of an object’s inherent coolness. (I fluctuate between .1 and 1.5 Fonzies, depending on what I am doing and who my audience is. In 1986, I would have rated Jimmy Page at an even megaFonzie.)

A Warhol represents 15 minutes of fame.

- 1 kilowarhol — famous for 15,000 minutes, or 10.42 days.
- 1 megawarhol — famous for 15 million minutes, or 28.5 years.

A Hobo is a unit describing how bad something smells.

0 hobo – Doesn’t smell bad at all.
13 hobo – A robust, uh, expulsion of personal gas.
30 hobo – The smeller must vomit.
50 hobo – A cat that’s been fed nothing but blue cheese for a week defecating on a white-hot hibachi.
100 hobo – Purely theoretical (comparable to absolute zero); would cause death by asphyxiation.

Sources, citations, and explanations here.

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