History Main / UnitConfusion

* ''LightNovel/TheAsteriskWar'': Irene Urzaiz uses the term "''fanega''" to describe micro-singularities she can fire at her opponents. The ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanega fanega]]'' is the Spanish bushel, a measurement of ''volume'' rather than of mass, force, or acceleration, any of which would be more apt for a GravityMaster.

* ''LightNovel/TheAsteriskWar'': Irene Urzaiz uses the term "''fanega''" to describe micro-singularities she can fire at her opponents. The ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanega fanega]]'' is the Spanish bushel, a measurement of ''volume'' rather than of mass, force, or acceleration, any of which would be more apt for a GravityMaster.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E5TheSeedsOfDeath The Seeds of Death]]", the thermostat shows a temperature above 60 degrees ''Centigrade'' after being turned up by Zoe to incapacitate the Ice Warriors. It has the desired effect on them, but the humans show no ill-effects, not even breaking sweat. In reality, such a temperature would be lethal to humans.[[note]]At the time the serial was made, most of the British populace was much more familiar with the Fahrenheit scale, so the person responsible for the prop likely didn't realize they were showing such an extreme temperature.[[/note]]

--> He returns and says: ''Recruit, you are right! Wter indeed boils at 100 degrees. 90 degrees is a straight angle!''

* An example of MilitaryHumor:

--> He returns and says: ''Recruit, you are right! 90 degrees is a straight angle!''

* The shoe sizes [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe_size are a complete quagmire]]. Not only do the shoe sizes depend of the country and culture, but also whether they are based on the foot size or last size (a last is the male "mould" upon which the shoe is made). The most common units are Mondopoint ((foot length and beam in millimetres), used on ski boots and by US armed forces), the EU sizing (1.5 times the length of the last in centimetres), US male shoe size (3 times the last length in inches minus 24), US female shoe size (3 times the last length in inches minus 22.5) and UK shoe size (approx 3 times the heel to toe length in inches minus 23). The UK sizes are one barleycorn (1/3 in or 8.47 mm) apart each other, while the EU sizes are 2/3 cm (6.6667 mm or 0.262 in). Mondopoint shoes are sized 5 mm apart, and they also take account the beam of the foot: 275/100 shoe is, while of same length (275 mm), 10 mm narrower than 275/110.

* The Metric system is an intentional [[AvertedTrope aversion]] of this trope. It was intended to become an international, independent and accurate system based on natural phenomena and constant, and be base-10, and be useful on both everyday use and for science. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], since there were some 38 different pounds and 43 different size feet [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Units_of_measurement_in_France_before_the_French_Revolution in France alone]] - which were a constant source for UnitConfusion, chaos and [[ExploitedTrope outright fraud]]. Several buildings and bridges collapsed because the masters and builders from different towns and different provinces used their own domestic, different size, units in construction (cue the case of the 17th century Swedish warship ''Wasa'' which is lengthwise asymmetric because of port side having been built by Swedish constructors using the Swedish feet (297 mm) while the starboard side having been built by Dutch constructors using the Dutch foot of 283 mm) To add an insult to injury, the Dutch foot consisted of ''eleven'' inches.). This unit chaos originated in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and collapse of standard weighs and measures. Alas, every petty kingdom, statelet and town adopted their own weighs and measures to [[HonorBeforeReason emphasize their independence]]. Already Charlemagne had attempted to make some sense in this chaos, but the various realms clung jealously on their own weighs and measures and would not approve standardization. The various scientists of the Age Of Reason - Newton, Huygens, Bernoulli, Papin etc - worked for an international standard system for weighs and measures, and the work was ready in 1790. King Louis XVI approved the Metric system legal in France.

* In the ''Webcomic/DarthsAndDroids'' take on the "twelve parsecs" line, the ''real'' Han Solo (the film's Greedo) [[https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0758.html tells Jim's character]] "It did the Kessel run in less than three standard days. That's ''twelve'' parsecs, kiddo", meaning that this his how long the Kessel run is. When Jim's character steals Han's identity, [[https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0767.html he completely misremembers this]]. When called on it, he switches to light years. (And, bizarrely, gets the conversion ''right''.)

* In the ''Webcomic/DarthsAndDroids'' take on the "twelve parsecs" line, the ''real'' Han Solo (the film's Greedo) tells Jim's character "It did the Kessel run in less than three standard days. That's ''twelve'' parsecs, kiddo", meaning that this his how long the Kessel run is. When Jim's character steals Han's identity, he completely misremembers this. When called on it, he switches to light years.

** Done intentionally in a story where Brigitta had been visiting Scrooge and, seeing he had an oral thermometer giving out a temperature of almost a hundred, went crazy with the frenzy of curing him from his tremendous fever. When Scrooge could finally get a word in, he pointed out she had wrongly assumed his thermometer gave the temperature in Celsius but it actually gave it in Fahrenheit. [[ComicallyMissingThePoint She demanded she thanked him for lowering his fever from almost a hundred to 37]].

* ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime2Echoes'' manages to do this with its [[{{Microts}} fictional measurement of time]], the cycle. While the length of one cycle is never really stated, based on its use in the Space Pirate logbooks it would seem to be analogous to something between a few months and a year. However the Luminoth elder U'mos is described as being several centicycles old. They probably meant several hundred cycles, but the prefic centi means one-hundredth. Presumably the writers either weren't aware of the correct prefix, or just decided it sounded cooler than "hectocycle".
** Of course the Luminoth could also simply have a different definition of "cycle" than the Space Pirates. Compare Imperial Tons to Metric Tonnes. Making it an in-universe example of LostInTranslation.
* An infamous example occurs in the lawnmowing minigame in ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes'', where "square meter" has been [[CulturalTranslation culturally]] [[BlindIdiotTranslation "translated"]] into "acre" (roughly ''four thousand'' square metres).

* Following on from relativity, several "natural units" systems (de Sitter, Gaussian, Planck, and Stony to name a few) have been developed by physicists. By making a judicious choice of physical constants and interpreting them as conversion factors (such as using the speed of light to convert between length and duration) physical quantities in any units can be made interconvertable.

* Subverted by relativity. If time is just another dimension the same as the other three, then you can perfectly well use the same units for each - and indeed this is extremely useful, meaning amongst other things that speed is a unitless quantity. You convert using the speed of light, that being a fundamental constant. This means that, though not a particularly useful unit, a 'light-year of time' is not, in fact, meaningless. Rather charmingly, it is precisely [[ShapedLikeItself the amount of time it takes light to travel the distance light can travel in a year]].

* Used intentionally as a major plot point in ''Film/ThisIsSpinalTap''. While trying to work out a big, stadium-pleasing onstage stunt to help the show, Nigel draws plans for a Stonehenge monument on a diner napkin, and the monument is built to the exact specifications he wrote, 18 ''inches'' (18"), not the intended 18 ''feet'' (18'). This leads to "a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf." This has actually happened to Music/BlackSabbath in RealLife.

* For many years, computer memory units used prefixes that looked like SI prefixes, but were subtly different. The Kilobyte was 1024 bytes, for example. This all went horribly wrong one day when an enterprising Marketer realised they could sell harddrives with storage capacities measured in megabytes... but using the SI meaning of mega (10[-[[superscript:6]]-]), not the computer engineering meaning of mega (2[-[[superscript:20]]-]). Result? Sell smaller drives, but claim the same size, thus undercutting competitors who spent more to make bigger drives because so many consumers didn't stop to check the difference. As a result of all this, a so-called "1.44 MB" floppy disk is neither 1.44 binary megabytes nor 1.44 decimal megabytes, but ''1.44 thousand binary kilobytes''. There are now new standard prefixes like 'kibi' and 'mebi' (short for kilo-binary and mega-binary, respectively) to mean 1024 and 1048576 respectively, but they've so far failed to be embraced by the hardware and software community outside of hard drive manufacturers (with the exception of [[UsefulNotes/{{UNIX}} Linux]], which ''does'' use the binary units and prefixes).

** There is, perhaps, a technical reason for this. When talking about how much a transmitter can change from one distinct value to another, the actual term is called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baud baud]][[note]] it's simply "buad" and not "baud rate", as baud is changes/sec, unless your data channel has acceleration)[[/note]]. But since its a term not commonly spoken, "bits per second" is used in this context instead. However, some transmitters for the sake of signal integrity use more bits to transmit the actual data. A common example is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8b/10b_encoding 8b/10b]] encoding where 10 bits are used to transmit 8 bits of data. But before you go "couldn't they just take out the encoding overhead?", a byte isn't always 8-bits.

* The Metric system is an intentional [[AvertedTrope aversion]] of this trope. It was intended to become an international, independent and accurate system based on natural phenomena and constant, and be base-10, and be useful on both everyday use and for science. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], since there were some 38 different pounds and 43 different size feet [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Units_of_measurement_in_France_before_the_French_Revolution in France alone]] - which were a constant source for UnitConfusion, chaos and [[ExploitedTrope outright fraud]]. Several buildings and bridges collapsed because the masters and builders from different towns and different provinces used their own domestic, different size. units in construction (cue the case of the 17th century Swedish warship ''Wasa'' which is lengthwise asymmetric because of port side having been built by Swedish constructors using Swedish feet (297 mm) while the starboard side having been built by Dutch constructors using the Dutch foot of 283 mm) To add an insult to injury, the Dutch foot consisted of ''eleven'' inches.). This unit chaos originated in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and collapse of standard weighs and measures. Alas, every petty kingdom, statelet and town adopted their own weighs and measures to [[HonorBeforeReason emphasize their independence]]. Already Charlemagne had attempted to make some sense in this chaos, but the various realms clung jealously on their own weighs and measures and would not approve standardization. The various scientists of the Age Of Reason - Newton, Huygens, Bernoulli, Papin etc - worked for an international standard system for weighs and measures, and the work was ready in 1790. King Louis XVI approved the Metric system legal in France.

*** Cases similar to the Dutch case can be seen in Greater China as well. Traditionally , 1 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catty catty]] = 16 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tael taels]] =160 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mace_%28unit%29 mace]] = ~600g. In 1959, however, Communists introduced a similar transition scheme, where 1 catty = 10 taels = 100 maces = 500g. Of course, the jurisdictions that are not under direct Beijing control--UsefulNotes/{{Hong Kong}}, UsefulNotes/{{Macau}} and UsefulNotes/{{Taiwan}} didn't follow. This is particularly confusing as these Chinese units of measurements are still in common use for foodstuff and precious metals..

** There is a joke where a woman is telling her friend about a guy's penis and claims it's 700 nanometres. The other woman is astonished that it's so small, but the first woman replies that the penis is that red (the wavelength of the color red is 620–750 nm). Somewhat of a subversion--both use the same system of measurement, and it's used correctly, but the ''context'' was what was missing.

* ''Series/TopGear'' has a tendency to parody this. James May, being GoodWithNumbers, gives accurate conversions but refers to metric and imperial respectively as 'Roman Catholic' and 'Church of England'. Jeremy Clarkson on the other hand deadpans complete nonsense such as measuring torque by spreading his hands apart and saying 'about that much'.

** Which is odd, because if the numbers on the plan are in metres, but were interpreted as feet, the kite would come out too ''small''.

* Another source of confusion is the fact that "ton" (2000 lbs, or 907.2 kg) and "tonne" (1000 kg, or 2204.6 lbs) are pronounced exactly the same; which one is being referred to may depend on where you are -- the United States for the former, or pretty much anywhere else for the latter. This can be alleviated by referring to the former as "short ton" and the latter as "metric ton", or by agreeing beforehand which system you're using. (Oh, and there's also the "long ton", just to keep things even more interesting.)