Measurements Named After Real People

[@NameExplain]

What would your name be a unit of measurement for?

[@10000spidersinatrenchcoat]

The amount of naps one can take in one day

[@TheUnavator]

The depression meter

[@Lightmations2025]

Lintavometer-an invention that can see the amount of light i can see

[@Ace_DM_2520]

Probably height

[@flankerpang]

My surname is Pang... So... How hungry you are?

[@cfgp]

3:07 Antonio Meucci is very commonly credited as the inventor of the telephone 3:39 you missed an important one there: ampere, the unit of current, named after André-Marie Ampère another fun fact: units that are named after people have capital symbols: N, W, V, Ω, J. but when written in full, they are written in lower-case. So 1 J, but 1 joule. Temperature units are written with a capital, though, when preceded by 'degree' (which kelvin is not). So 1 °F and 1 °C. But 1 K, *not* 1 °K. 1 degree Fahrenheit, 1 degree Celsius, but 1 kelvin. as for the relation between units: power is voltage times current (1 W = 1 V × 1 A), voltage is current times resistance (1 V = 1 A × 1 Ω), power is energy per time, aka, energy times frequency (1 W = 1 J × 1 Hz) Kelvin and Celsius have similar intervals (so a 1 °C increase is a 1 K increase), but with different zeros. 0 °C is the freezing point of water, 0 K is absolute zero. 0 K = -273.15 °C there is a similar absolute scale with intervals equivalent to the Fahrenheit scale, called degrees Rankine. A 1 °F increase is a 1 °R increase. 0 °R = -459.67 °F, which is also absolute zero.

[@greamespens1460]

Really interesting.

[@jayjohnson1333]

You are so knowledgeable ...it's sexy😇

[@sdspivey]

Incorrect, he is uncommonly credited.

[@elliothennessy8360]

A kelvin was defined as one degree Celsius, so not just “similar intervals,” definitionally identical

[@ilikedoom2707]

Another one worth mentioning is the Schmidt pain index, named for Justin Schmidt who personally tested the pain level if several insect stings

[@tohfawalker159]

0:22 since the meter is defined by how long it takes light to travel that long, yes you can define your shoe size in time. We quite often use time as a measure of distance eg. “How far away are you?” “About 3 minutes away.”

[@GamingGardevoir]

And car races measure the distance between cars with seconds!

[@VojtěchJavora]

@@GamingGardevoir also other races, not only cars

[@danadnauseam]

One of my favorites is the Smoot, which is used to measure the length of a bridge over the Charles River between Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Oliver Smoot was a student a MIT, and as part of the hazing process for joining a fraternity, he was used to measure the bridge. Marks at every 10 Smoots are regularly repainted to this day.

[@WUStLBear82]

Becquerels are units of radiation, while Sieverts measure health risk from radiation dosage. Pascals are units of pressure. Coulombs are units of electric charge. Maxwells are units of magnetic flux, while Teslas measure magnetic flux density (previously measured by Gauss).

[@HalfEye79]

There as well is Siemens, which is the unit of electric conductance, electric susceptance, and electric admittance. There is a fum story behind of its former name. Since 1 Siemens is the invert value of 1 Ohm, it was suggested, that the name should be Mho with the symbol of an omega on the head. So, both the other way roung as 1 Ohm.

[@tozainamboku]

Enjoyed this. Once upon a time I thought of becoming a KZbinr and making a video on this topic. My idea was a travel video visiting the 4 largest cities in the UK (London, Birmingham, Manchester, and Glasgow) and talking about how we have the Newton, Watt, Joule, and Kelvin each named for a scientist who was in someway associated with each city. I must admit I was inspired by Tom Scott's videos at the time. But when I found Name Explain, I realized that this topic would be a better fit for your channel. Thanks for finally making it.

[@MonochromeWench]

There are so many more electrical units named after people like Ampere, Henry and Farad. A more general but very important one missing is Joule

[@examininglife4338]

Joule was mentioned 6:20

[@pauljordan4452]

​@@examininglife4338Units named after their inventors are called eponyms.

[@ciroguerra-lara6747]

Faraday?

[@duckpotat9818]

You forgot an important electrical unit- Ampere of current. Imagine an electric circuit like a system of pipes with water. Volts is equivalent the pressure of water in the tube, relate it to the height of the water tank and the speed of the water in the pipe. Ampere is equivalent how many litres of water flow through a pipe in a second. Multiplying these gives you how much water is flowing how fast that is the power carried by the pipes - Watt Ohms is equivalent to the friction in the pipe.

[@0011peace]

while friction is part it ohms would indicate obstruction in the flow and width of the pipe

[@Sordorack]

A whole bunch in one: the Planck units are a set of units used to describe the universe, often in the smallest - or the largest - units possible with our current understanding of Physics: As such you could say the universe is "pixelated" by pixels of 1 planck length The planck time is the time it takes light to traverse the planck length, so a shorter time is also pretty hard to get in that sense on the contrary, the planck temperature is so high that the radiation a piece of matter this hot would send out would be have a wavelength of 1 planck length. In short they give us sort of bounds to what our current understanding and rhetoric of physics and the universe can even describe

[@martinfawkes595]

Fawkes should be used to measure how ineffective your plot to blow up the houses of Parliament was.

[@CharlesStearman]

"The face that launched a thousand ships" comes from the play "Dr. Faustus" by Christopher Marlowe - the full quote is "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium" and refers to Helen's role as the cause of the Trojan War.

[@sydhenderson6753]

A millihelen launches one ship, and a microhelen launches one plank. I guess a nanohelen would launch a toothpick.

[@acg1571]

“volta” in italian means time as in an occasion, “volte” is its plural. i think the italian word you were looking for was “volpe” which does mean fox. great video !! :)

[@kaitlyn__L]

Knowing the latin was vulpes, I wondered what might’ve changed the P to a T in Italian. Guess he was just wrong lol

[@skidawg22]

Just from watching this video did I learn that Wil Wheaton has a measurement named for him. There's also Wheaton's Law, which is simply "Don't be a dick."

[@JeremyWS]

Y'know what I think is extremely British about measuments is the fact that the British thermal unit (Btu) is still in usage today to measure heat energy. I still see laundry dryers measure the amount of heat produced by them in Btu. So yes, this unit is still used. I realized it isn't named for anyone inparticular, I just think this is extremely British. lol

[@ckl9390]

It's the same reason why Imperial is still used in a piecemeal fashion in many countries that are supposed to be metric. People are used to them and have a reference for comparison. Or, the metric unit is impractical in some way. It's why no one I know uses metric for their height, because the common metric units of length go immediately from the width of a finger to over an arm-span. About the length of a foot is a useable measure.

[@MeMySkirtandI]

Farenhieght is scaled perfect for measuring temperatures people usually encounter in a given year, and also what temperatures people are most comfortable in. Zero is when humans start to 'freeze' and a hundred is when humans start to 'boil'. With -40 being the absolute coldest a person can reasonably tolerate with the right equipment, and 120 is the hottest. It is far more precise for daily weather measurements than Celsious because it rarely or never gets hot enough on earth to boil water using air temperature alone.

[@cottrelr]

Exactly! Celsius is scaled to measure water. Kelvin is scaled to measure the universe. And Fahrenheit is scaled to measure people. Fun fact, it was intentionally scaled to put the freezing point of water at 32, and the human body temperature at 96 (what Fahrenheit measured it to at the time), so that there would be 64 degrees between them. Since 64 is a base-2 number, it was easier to mark a gradient - just divide by 2 over and over again! (And before anyone asks, no, I don't think that Fahrenheit is *better* than Celsius. I just understand what it was optimized for. If you want a single universal measurement for everything, Celsius is obviously superior.)

[@GamingGardevoir]

@@cottrelr I’ve been saying that too! I didn’t have a thing for Kelvin though

[@knowitall6677]

Except negative temperatures are absurd as you cannot have negative volumes and pressures. Fahrenheit is totally abstract and is illogical. Kelvin all the way.

[@Jan_Koopman]

Joules are the unit of energy. And the definition of a Watt is that 1W = 1J/s Another electrical unit named after a person is the unit for current, Ampère

[@ouijaclown]

6:57 makes me think of the Schmidt pain scale/index! it’s a grading of 78 bugs’ stings on a 0-4 scale. he did the research all on his own by getting stung by those 78 bugs!

[@greamespens1460]

I like Angstrom it is probably the only metric unit of distance named after someone. I also feel sorry for the units that have disappeared Curie's and Rutherford's though they remain famous in their own right

[@loogabarooga2812]

Fermi is also a unit of distance equal to one femtometer

[@greamespens1460]

@@loogabarooga2812 Thanks Abhishek, I was wrong. That ruined the uniqueness of the Angstrom for me. All the best

[@user-ql1jv1dw8s]

Woudln't a Bohr radius count ?

[@greamespens1460]

@@user-ql1jv1dw8s Yes, never heard of it, just reading now. So we have Angstrom, Femtometer and Bohr's Radius.

[@sydhenderson6753]

Ampere for current, coulomb and faraday for charge, Curie and Becquerel for units of radioactivity, farad for capacitance (Michael Faraday has two units named after him; Ohm also has the mho, which is a unit of conductivity: 1 mho = 1/(1ohm) ), gauss and henry are magnetic units

[@HalfEye79]

You missed the measurements of Coulomb and Ampere. The name Ohm is a shortened, but used, form of Oheim, which is an alternative word for Onkel ("uncle").

[@CharlesStearman]

Ohm is usually pronounced with a long o so it rhymes with home.

[@thejamesthird]

My surname Third could be a unit of measurement! It could represent a portion of something that has been split into three.

[@pauljordan4452]

Cool.

[@clahey]

The Smoot is a unit of length used to measure Harvard bridge between Cambridge and Boston, MA. It's near MIT and is named after Oliver Smoot, the fraternity pledge who lay down repeatedly to measure the length of the bridge. The bridge is 364.4 smoots and 1 ear long.

[@michaelturner2806]

Watts and Volts (and related Amps) might be easy to not remember if you're not using them all the time. Let's use tea as a metaphor! And I hope I don't get this wrong. Volts can be thought of as how strong the tea is when you're being brewing it. Amps is how fast you're pouring the tea. Watts, being the product of volts and amps, is the total buzz you get from the tea. Over in the UK, your electricity is about 230 volts (or 220, or close enough that it doesn't matter for a broad overview). For an electric kettle, that means yours takes a lot less amps to heat up water than it does in the US, which runs at 110 volts. But, very broadly speaking, it'll take the same watts to do the same work.

[@cocolosus00]

Mohs, Beaufort, Fujita, Ampere to name a few.

[@SomethingBeautifulHandcrafts]

Well since you mentioned the Scoville, don't forget the Fujita and Richter scales, measuring the strength of a tornado by damage and an earthquake respectively.

[@1224chrisng]

well, the Fujita and Richter scales aren't really used anymore, we now have the Enhanced-Fujita and Moment-Magnetude scales respectively

[@nathanielvalla6142]

Siemens and mhos for conduction, ampere for current, Tesla and Guass for magnetic strength weber for flux density

[@me0101001000]

I would also add Teslas, which are for magnetism, Einsteins, which refer to moles of photons. There are more to discuss!

[@DrFerno727]

A Foote could be approximatively 10.5 minutes, but might be mixed with a foot.

[@tohfawalker159]

No problem with it being mixed up as there is the ounce and the fluid ounce, the tonne and ton and there are at least 2 definitions of carrot depending on if it is a metal or crystal.

[@MichaelJohnson-vi6eh]

Fahrenheit - 0 is ridiculously cold but not immediately deadly. 100 is ridiculously hot but not immediately deadly. 50 is chilly but OK with a light sweater.

[@knowitall6677]

To understand Watts and Volts look at how they are defined. Watts is the rate of change of energy so is measured in joules per second. Volts is the amount of energy a charge is carrying and in this case the electron. It is measured in Joules per Coulomb .

[@elliothennessy8360]

No, this hill I will die on. Imperial measurements should become obsolete except for Fahrenheit. Because he labeled the coldest and hottest recorded temperatures in the region as 0 and 100 respectively (and thus made a degree 0.01 of the difference between them), it’s basically a scale from “oh, that’s cold” to “oh, that’s hot.” Having the air temperature be written as a negative number for 5 months out of the year is so unnecessary. Anyway, the real reason I care so much about this is that the smaller degrees are much more useful for the human experience. Like, 21°C is what I want my house to be, but a sustained 22°C is unbearable. That’s a little ridiculous, no?

[@joshuahargrave8239]

Can't believe you didn't mention the Smoot!

[@sdspivey]

Fahrenheit does have a proper zero, at the freezing point of a specific alcohol, not having anything to do with winter. Also the boiling point of the alcohol is at 100°F. The Celsius 0°/100° are based on pure water, something they did not have in abundance back then.

[@billyr2904]

The United states and Liberia, are the only 2 countries that officially use the imperial system.

[@modmaker7617]

Well there's also Canada & the UK which use both Metric & Imperial. As a person that lives in the UK, I can say most people use Imperial and the Canadian KZbinr, JJ McCullough says Canadians prefer Imperial. There's also Myanmar which used their own systems of measurement but people prefer Metric.

[@cottrelr]

The U.S. does not use the Imperial System. It uses the U.S. Customary System. The biggest difference is in volume measurements -- the U.S. uses 16 oz = 1 pint, while Imperial uses 20 oz = 1 pint. And technically the U.S. has standardized to metric. All U.S. Customary measurements are officially defined by their metric conversion. For example, the Inch is officially defined as 25.4 millimeters.

[@tohfawalker159]

@@modmaker7617 as a Brit I feel the metric vs imperial is more generational than anything. The young prefers metric and the older prefer imperial.

[@modmaker7617]

@@tohfawalker159 Sounds accurate.

[@adricortesia]

The stranges measurement unit I ever came across is one Smoot. Named after Oliver Smoot. It's a measurement of length. One Smoot is the length of Oliver Smoot. Funnily enough, he was the vice President of some standard measurements as far as I understood. We also have a Becquerel and a Curie, units for radioactivity.

[@gyorokpeter]

I could imagine my surname being used as a measure for how often a word is mispronounced.

[@GamingGardevoir]

G-your-ook

[@pauljordan4452]

Hungarian right?

[@gyorokpeter]

@@pauljordan4452 yes

[@sarahlimberger9690]

How is Xavier pronounced and where did it come from? I've heard both Zavier and X-avier

[@wtspman]

Mach, Coulomb, Becquerel, Curie, Ampere, Farad

[@wtspman]

Ångström

[@michaelturner2806]

I was hoping to come up with some other kind of distance measuring for my D&D games. I don't know about internationally, but here in the US it defaults to measuring nearly everything in increments of five feet. Approximations could be made for meters by dividing by five and multiplying by two, so everything is measured in two meter increments. Scale could get really off, but when the game assumes a base humanoid creature takes up a space roughly five feet square for width and depth, and ten feet tall, scale is already far out the window. I wanted to come up with some kind of natural magical phenomenon where some certain kind of object was always what we know as five feet long, and base the in-game measuring units after the name of that thing. I never got around to finding it though. I might do florbs. Named for the average size of the translucent blue but untouchable illusory floating orbs that migrate from one side of the continent and back every three fifths of a year.

[@thorpizzle]

Not a measurement, and not even an official statistic, but in baseball a Maddux is a game in which the starting pitcher finishes the game in 9 innings, wins, shuts out the opponent, and throws fewer than 100 pitches. It was named for pitcher Greg Maddux, who had nearly twice as many of those games as any other pitcher.

[@Greatmount]

Tog is also used for baby sleep sacks/wearable blankets.

[@masterimbecile]

The Smoot.

[@Bacopa68]

That's only in parts of Massachusetts.

[@TrafficPartyHatTest]

Who is John Foot??

[@aeschynanthus_sp]

Is "volte" really 'fox' in Italian? I thought that is "volpe" (from Latin "vulpes").

[@PeterBuvik]

There is one measurement unit named after two people the decibelmilliwatt which measures radio signal strength.

[@allanrichardson9081]

The unit of conductance, the reciprocal of resistance, was once called the “mho,” which is the name of Mr. Ohm spelled backwards, but is now officially a “Siemen,” after a German scientist who is known for starting a worldwide electronics maker. The unit of frequency was formerly the “cycle,” short for “cycles per second,” and radio frequencies were quoted in kilocycles or megacycles, before the official term Hertz was agreed upon. The unit of inductance (the effect of a varying magnetic field on the conductor that created it) is the “henry” after Joseph Henry, and the unit of capacitance (the effect of an electrostatic field across a broken circuit) is the “farad” after Michael Faraday. Before I learned its derivation, I thought that it was derived from an Arabic word, pronounced “fah-RAHD.”😏

[@davidroddini1512]

3:40 “What relates to the consumption of electricity a device may use?” Why don’t you tell me? I don’t feel like doing that whole ‘game show’ thing right now.

[@EulaliaDaisy]

Fahrenheit was supposed to be set around the human body's temperature. 100 F was his best estimate to that, however he was off a bit (still impressively close). It's a dumb measurement, but it works.

[@Illumisepoolist]

I would use my name Hicks to measure the height and radius of a splash when someone dives into water.

[@dinosatay]

usually, the trio of electric units make the equation V=I.R "I" being electric current or Ampere(s) which im guessing is also some bloke's name

[@Fayanora]

Celsius tells you how water is feeling. Fahrenheit tells you how people are feeling. Fahrenheit is perfect for that; 80 degrees F sounds as hot as it really is. But 26 C will never sound hot to most people. I honestly think we should use both, but leave Celsius mostly for scientists to use.

[@KristianWontroba]

Bacon! You forgot The Kevin Bacon Number! 😂😂😂 Seriously though great video as usual! 😊

[@_Mr.Tuvok_]

Ooh you forgot the Saffir-Simpson scale-which measures hurricane wind speeds (category 1-5)

[@elinakangas571]

Are there any Newtons left?

[@nancyclark864]

@Elina Kangas no, Isaac Newton did not reproduce.

[@elinakangas571]

@@nancyclark864 I see. Did his parents have other children? What happened to them if there were any?

[@davidwebb3407]

For the pro wrestling fans, we have the Muta scale. Not for the faint of heart, however.

[@the_alex_ellis_channel6923]

So, not named after Hertz Van Rental then?

[@WallahNein]

Watt refers to mechanical power, as a electrical engineer I'm using Voltampere, so Volt*Ampere, but technically it's both power.

[@VojtěchJavora]

Also tesla is a unit of magnetic induction

[@samwill7259]

Funny concept. Someday I want to be able to measure the length of something in Davids

[@klikkolee]

I do not understand why people consider having round numbers for the freezing and boiling points of water to be significant. The freezing and boiling of water is a rare thought in my life, and even if I was boiling and freezing water on a daily basis, I would see no reason to impress that aspect of my life into how temperatures in general are measured. The metric system has a lot over the US system, but Celsius is not one of them. It shouldn't even be considered "metric" -- Celsius measurements only form interval data, not ratio data -- meaning that the metric prefixes can only be validly applied to differences in Celsius temperatures, not to actual Celsius temperatures. Using water's phase changes as 0 and 100 is just as arbitrary as basing the 0 on the coldest day of an arbitrary winter. Fahrenheit, meanwhile, has at least a little going for it -- the 0 and 100 points vaguely correspond to landmark points of human temperature perception, with zero being "really cold" and 100 being "really hot", and the graduations are at the edge of what people can reliably notice. I can sometimes feel differences between a 67F and 68F room, but it usually doesn't matter. The difference between a 19C room and a 20C room is the difference between too cold and too hot for me, and I may need equipment which displays and regulates to halves of degrees Celsius to ensure a comfortable temperature.

[@WallahNein]

Btw your weight should actually be in Newton, because it's the force on your body. That's why your weight changes on the moon. Your mass however stays the same and is measured in kilogram.

[@cowmooflagarina]

Any other Irish people sniggering at Mickeys per inch? (Ps really enjoyed the video thanks Mr Name)

[@the-scamp]

Lol@the narrator: "laRst"

[@GamingGardevoir]

I’ve always said: Celsius is how heat feels to water, Fahrenheit is how heat feels to a person.

[@knowitall6677]

That is absurd as if you are used to Celsius you think in Celsius

[@GamingGardevoir]

@@knowitall6677 I’m speaking by logic, Celsius was based on water, measured to put freezing at 0 and boiling at 100. Fahrenheit was made with a reference body temperature of 96 and a bowl of ice water at 32 (salted ice water at 0), creating a base 64 scale. Scientists later adjusted that scale to place the standard freezing point of water at 32 and boiling at 212 (exactly 180 degrees apart), and in doing so the body temperature changed to 98.6

[@Bacopa68]

Only Kelvin and Rankine have sensible zero points. They both measure from Absolute Zero, and are thus proper scalar magnitudes. Fahrenheit and Celsius are not scalar magnitudes.

[@0011peace]

But at the timeof either no one een thought about absolute zero

[@cottrelr]

Great if you're measuring the universe. Not-so-great if you're measuring the weather.

[@knowitall6677]

@@cottrelr no necessary as if people think in Kelvin then they understand Kelvin.

[@Lcngopher]

But i also think of hertz as a car rental company.

[@Invalid-user13k]

I remember the smoot

[@ciroguerra-lara6747]

Amperes, Coulombs, Roentgens, Curies,

[@PlayingGilly]

In Ireland a mickey means something very different.

[@SomethingBeautifulHandcrafts]

In the US it kinda means something different too...

[@pennywaldrip3774]

My name is Penny - it's already seemingly a "measurement" of 1 cent. (at least in US)

[@tohfawalker159]

A penny is also £0.01

[@Bibibosh]

hertz stuart curtas

[@brianedwards7142]

Nuclear physics is full of measurements named after people like Sieverts, Roentgens and Curies and I am sure there are more. Nobody knows what they mean, nobody at all 🤣

[@FilipMaljkovic]

You missed a lot, but I could single out Tesla! Also, you should have done better research (not that hard) in terms of SI units and their corresponding quantities.

[@brianedwards7142]

I would have thought watts was the most familiar measurement. Just saying.

[@likebot.]

farad smoot planck beaufort

[@oliverkarehag9883]

Röntgen- measures radiation

[@dannysydo2026]

Andrew Warhola's mother and father came from Slovakia and not from Ukraine.

[@knowitall6677]

Does not mean that the name is not Ukrainian as the family some time ago could have come through there.

[@kaitlyn__L]

I feel sorry for you trying to understand watts and volts by everyone’s analogies. So I won’t make an analogy. But I will say, watts can also just be used to measure heat, but volts are specifically an electrical thing. Like, a candle puts out about 100W of heat. The wattage on your kettle is both the electrical consumption AND the heat output of the kettle.

[@jayjohnson1333]

Well there's already a unit called a Johnson ☺️

[@jerryadams4537]

It may, indeed, be silly, but Fahrenheit is certainly more accurate than Centigrade. Think about it.

[@kornaros96]

No

[@jemDarpole]

the tesla named after Nicola tesla

[@frankstrawnation]

And Tesla means "harvester".

[@davidroddini1512]

Hertz is not named in honor of Heimlich Hertz. Rather it was named in honor of Benjamin Franklin. After his famous experiment with a kite in a thunderstorm that got stuck by lightning, he was quoted as saying “That Hertz!” 😂

[@0011peace]

Fahrenheit was orginally on circle or half circle hence 180 for from water freezing to boiling. They start 32 to 212 to keep most common temperature in experimentation above 0degrees and there would be less chance to have negative temperature wrap around. If OF was at zero then 212F would be below the horizon on the circle.This kept common circle thermometers from having high common temps below the line. And except a few experiments there was no need to go below -148F. Most common theremometers use mercury which changes by one degree per degree. Celcius is silly deviding into 100 is silly all other metric systems are based on 1000 not 100. !00 also is too big can't get as good of accuracy with celcius. Should move to miigrade to correct the flaws.

[@knowitall6677]

Metric is based on the unit tem and not 1000s.

[@0011peace]

@@knowitall6677 not excactly true Most common units are micro, mili, Kilo, Mega and Giga all power 1000. You never hear of DecoKilo meters. Rarely anuthiong deci or centi liters with millimeters. You have 750 mililters not 75 deciliters. While you did of centimeters yourarely hear of decimeter it would be 10 mililiter. Units are measured mostly in 10^3 no 10^1