History Main / Mismeasurement

* In a strip from the Boy Scout magazine ''ComicStrip/BoysLife'', Pee Wee and Westy are charged with making cookies for a camping trip using a metric conversion of the recipe. They correctly make the conversion but over-bake the cookies when they get the baking time, the only measurement that wouldn't change, wrong. All is not lost as they pass off the crumbled cookies as granola.

* In the film ''Film/TheBlackBird'' (a sequel/parody of ''Film/{{The Maltese Falcon|1941}}''), the eponymous statue is mismeasured; it's one cubit long, about the length of a man's forearm, but the man who was measuring it is a Little Person so his arm is much shorter than normal.

* In the Polish ''Kajko i Kokosz'' comic books the evil knights would construct a siege tower to get over the town wall but at night the heroes would sneak into the knights' encampment and alter the plans just enough to foil the plan. Since the knights were too stupid to recheck the measurements they would end up with a ramp that was too short or too long and HilarityEnsued.

* In a strip from the Boy Scout magazine ''Boys Life'', Pee Wee and Westy are charged with making cookies for a camping trip using a metric conversion of the recipe. They correctly make the conversion but over-bake the cookies when they get the baking time, the only measurement that wouldn't change, wrong. All is not lost as they pass off the crumbled cookies as granola.

* In the film ''The Black Bird'' (a sequel/parody of ''Film/{{The Maltese Falcon|1941}}''), the eponymous statue is mismeasured; it's one cubit long, about the length of a man's forearm, but the man who was measuring it is a Little Person so his arm is much shorter than normal.

* Several of the disasters depicted on shows such as ''Series/AirCrashInvestigation'', ''Series/SecondsFromDisaster'', and similar, are the result of mismeasurement. Plane and train crashes, explosions, building collapses - it's all a result of someone, at some point, measuring something ''very'' wrong. In some cases, the measurement was actually correct, but dismissed as unrealistically low/high.

* Several of the disasters depicted on shows such as ''Series/Air Crash Investigation'', Seconds From Disaster, and similar, are the result of mismeasurement. Plane and train crashes, explosions, building collapses - it's all a result of someone, at some point, measuring something ''very'' wrong. In some cases, the measurement was actually correct, but dismissed as unrealistically low/high.

* Several of the disasters depicted on shows such as ''Series/Mayday'', Seconds From Disaster, and similar, are the result of mismeasurement. Plane and train crashes, explosions, building collapses - it's all a result of someone, at some point, measuring something ''very'' wrong. In some cases, the measurement was actually correct, but dismissed as unrealistically low/high.

* Several of the disasters depicted on shows such as AirCrashInvestigation, {{Mayday}}, Seconds From Disaster, and similar, are the result of mismeasurement. Plane and train crashes, explosions, building collapses - it's all a result of someone, at some point, measuring something ''very'' wrong. In some cases, the measurement was actually correct, but dismissed as unrealistically low/high.

* In ''Manga/BlackButler'', maid Maylene misread the instruction label of a detergent due to her poor eyesight, and used 30 cups instead of the required 3, causing a huge, bubbly mess.

* In the film ''The Black Bird'' (a sequel/parody of ''FIlm/TheMalteseFalcon''), the eponymous statue is mismeasured; it's one cubit long, about the length of a man's forearm, but the man who was measuring it is a Little Person so his arm is much shorter than normal.

* In a strip from the Boy Scout magazine ''Boys Life'' Pee Wee and Westy are charged with making cookies for a camping trip using a metric conversion of the recipe. They correctly make the conversion but over-bake the cookies when they get the baking time, the only measurement that wouldn't change, wrong. All is not lost as they pass off the crumbled cookies as granola.

* The prop for the "Stonehenge" number in ''Film/ThisIsSpinalTap'' was embarrassingly small because the napkin sketch Nigel made for it had an inch symbol where a foot symbol should have been.

Not to be confused with UnitConfusion. See also MisplacedADecimalPoint.

* Nearly any unintentional drug overdose is a result of this, whether prescription, over the counter, illegal, or anything, whether it be on the side of the manufacturer (e.g. the pharmaceutical company mismeasures the amount of active substance needed in its pills, the drug dealer actually ''doesn't'' [[WateringDown "cut"]] the heroin as much as usual) or on the side of the consumer (someone thinks they need to take more of a laxative or sleeping pill to make it work faster, someone drinks over their limit, someone assumes the pharma company or drug dealer to be trustworthy)

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* In ''Manga/BlackButler'', maid Maylene misread the instruction label of a detergent due to her poor eyesight, and used 30 cups instead of the required 3, causing a huge, bubbly mess.

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* In the WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue of ''VideoGame/GhostTrick'', Beauty and Dandy are shown trying to break into a safe using ''twenty kilograms of gunpowder''.

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* In Soviet short ''[[http://eralash.ru/video/%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BC%D1%8C-%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B7-%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%8C Measure Seven Times]]'' a schoolboy takes the proverb "measure 7 times, cut once" [[NotHyperbole too literally]] and makes a stool 7 times larger.[[note]]The general view of the stool appears at 2:28.[[/note]]

->'''Beauty''': Wait a minute. "Twenty KILOGRAMS"?! I thought it was twenty GRAMS...!
->'''''[KABOOM!]'''''

* A ''{{Garfield}}'' strip had Jon asking Garfield about the right amount of chili powder to add to a dish that he was making. The resulting amount caused the entire dish to go poof (It might have been intentional, as Garfield then tells Jon to pitch it all out and order a pizza).

* ''HeyArnold'': When the town tries to bake the world-record largest pizza puff, Sid accidentally adds an absurdly large amount of baking soda because he reads "tsp" (for "teaspoon") as meaning "ten square pounds", resulting in a massive pizzasplosion.
* ''TheSimpsons'': Homer is in the basement trying to invent something. He works out a few equations on the chalkboard, hammers, saws, welds, and finally [[EpicFail blows up the basement]]. Walking over to a chart, he changes a "greater than" sign to a "less than" sign, and goes back to work. (This causes an even ''bigger'' explosion, and on the next review he finds and erases the "Dynamite" component from the diagram.)

* Several of the disasters depicted on shows such as AirCrashInvestigation, {{Mayday}}, Seconds From Disaster, and similar, are the result of mismeasurement. Plane and train crashes, explosions, building collapses - it's all a result of someone, at some point, measuring something ''very'' wrong.

* ''JonathanCreek'': In "Angel Hair", Jonathan is designing an illusion that centers around sawing a ventriloquist dummy in half. As the trick requires extra sets of feet for the dummy, he tells the dummy maker to be sure dummy has twelve feet. The dummy maker ends up delivering a 12 foot tall dummy.
* An episode of ''TheCosbyShow'' had Theo ask his older sister if she could tailor a fake designer shirt for him (he had previously claimed he owned one in order to impress a girl). Her measurements are off, resulting in the shirt having mismatched sleeves among other problems.

* This was a feature of many of Bergholt Stuttley "Bloody Stupid" Johnson's inventions on the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}''.