Unit Confusion: Difference between revisions
Rescuing 1 sources and tagging 0 as dead.) #IABot (v2.0.8
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** People mistook "light-years" to be a construction along the lines of "[[Call a Rabbit a Smeerp|Space Miles]]" or "[[Two of Your Earth Minutes|Earth Minutes]]" - sciencey word + unit of measure = sci-fi unit of measure.
** To increase the confusion a bit more, the second in parsec (parallax second) is a unit of angle<ref>an ''arc''second, i.e. 1/60 of 1/60 of 1/90 of a right angle</ref>, while the year in light-year is indeed a unit of time.
*** As noted [https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2006-11-09 here].
* One obscure enough that it comes up all the time: Since 1968, the standard unit of absolute temperature is "kelvins", not "degrees Kelvin". The older usage dates to before the 13th General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM).
* On a related note, some works make reference to a temperature which is lower than absolute zero. Absolute zero means the total absence of heat or energy of any kind - you can't get colder than that, and according to the Laws of Thermodynamics it's impossible to reach even zero.
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== Anime and Manga ==
* The first English dub of ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' falls victim to this trope: When Bulma is explaining to the group why traveling to Namek would be impossible, she gives her answer in years, then promptly adds "And that's in light-years!" [[Hand Wave|Perhaps]] Bulma is distinguishing years in an ordinary slower-than-light craft from years at ''c''.
* In ''[[Bleach]]'', Ryuken tells his injured son that if he yell 5 Hertz louder he'll reopen his wounds (basically telling him to shut up), but Hertz is a measure of frequency (high or low) not intensity (decibels in the case of sound). But then Ishida ''is'' kind of a [[Glass Cannon]], [[
== Comic Books ==
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== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Traveller]]'' has ship tonnage measured in "tons" that are unit of volume — of one ton (1000kg) of ''liquid hydrogen'', 14 m³. Like there wasn't enough of "tons". See [https://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/shipyard/tonnage.html this article], for example (so a "100-[d]ton ship" in ''Traveller'' has a volume equal to 100 ''metric'' tons of LH2.)
* As a "watts" example in reverse, '''''[[GURPS]]''''' sourcebooks insists on referring to kilojoules as "kilowatt-seconds". Although technically correct this is inelegant and confusing and proof that, even with the constant calls for them to abandon Imperial units, Steve Jackson Games shouldn't be let loose with SI.
** They can't even keep that much straight. Centimeters get used from time to time, generally for weapons. More confusingly the abbreviation mps is used to talk about mile per second despite the fact that even people in the US think of it as meters per second.
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** It also plays with this trope with some things, such as freem, which are explained as the amount of pay a "Poliflorian Hypernetter earns about two thousand Freem during one Efrickalian work-week."
** Comparison of [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2005-02-08 two] [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2005-03-05 strips] from the ''sixth'' book suggest he's confused diameter and radius.
* ''Luke Surl'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20120506085222/http://www.lukesurl.com/archives/1607 shows] a confusion of angle units [[Exposition Diagram|on a chart]].
* ''[[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]]'' shows [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=330 self-explaining one].
* ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' reminds us: pay attention to avoiding [http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20010930 this] while attempting a [["Mission Impossible" Cable Drop]]. Ouch.
* ''[[Chasing the Sunset]]'' had a [[The Fair Folk|pixie]] rather annoyed with Elven habit of measuring distance in "bowshots". Not unreasonably, as [
== Web Original ==
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== Western Animation ==
* In one episode of ''[[Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy]]'', Edd is working on an old radio, and realizes he'd mistaken a "fifteen-amp resistor" for another part. The problem is, amps are used to measure ''current'', and the ''ohm'' is used to measure resistance. Resistors have power handling specifications too, but the unit for those is the watt, so that doesn't help.
** Actually, if you know how many ''watts'' and how many ''ohms'', Ohm's Law will yield current, as ''wattage = resistance * (current) squared''. It's an unusual choice of unit, but valid.
** Nonetheless, a 240V 10A resistor would be a 2400 watt (24 ohm) baseboard heater, which would be fairly warm and power-hungry. A standard radio receiver shouldn't be drawing 15 ampères.
* In ''[[The Simpsons]]'', Crazy Vaclav asserts that the car he's trying to sell will "do 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene". The hectare is a measure of area, not distance.
** [[Fridge Brilliance|Maybe his country is so poor the primary use of cars is to]] ''[[Schizo-Tech|plow fields]]''.
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** That's one of the reasons why until Lev Gumilev who knew about chakrym participated, no one could pinpoint the exact location of Khazaria despite many references. Say, there's a letter from Khazarian Kagan Joseph to Hasdai ibn Shafrut with distances from his capital city Itil to the borders: 20 parasangs to the East is Caspian Sea, 30 and 20 to North and South are rivers (the names of which were not readily identifiable). Looks easy — we only need to cut a triangle and see where it fits on the map, and even if the value of parasang changed a bit, we'll be close, right? Well, no. This would place a big city in the middle of nowhere, rather than on the Volga, where it was known to be. One, the parasang as "learned" by Europeans is the average value for Iranian plateau, but in the flat Steppes it's of course longer. Two, the inner sea's level was much lower (it was known to raise shortly before the Khazaria's end, then more, then drop a bit). Which places Itil in the delta of Volga as it was back then, and now under water and alluvium.
* [//www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI9w8g4UT2I This video] shows more examples of units with the same names but different values (e.g. short tons vs. long tons, statute miles vs. nautical miles vs. imperial nautical miles, etc.).
* Some of the more '''pretentious''' electric heaters (overpriced opportunistic scams basically, since ''all'' resistance heaters – and resistors in general – convert electricity to heat at a 1:1 ratio<ref>See the Law of Conservation of Energy; where else would the heat ''go'', other than the room the heater's in? (Fuel-burning heaters lose some heat through the flue/chimney, except of course for unflued gas heaters which however are somewhat unsafe; but electric heaters don't ''produce'' any combustion fumes to dispose of, apart from externally at combustion-based power plants where used.)</ref> and '''nothing''' can be done to change that) claim to “use less energy than a coffee machine” (or whatever):
:First of all, the figures they're comparing are '''power''' (which only ''directly'' matters as far as circuit loading is concerned); second (and '''importantly''') the coffee machine operates its heating elements only for the short time necessary to get the water hot, while a room heater (or radiator, where targeting the heat gives enough benefit to outweigh their fire hazard) can work at its full power as long as it's switched on (decent heaters can anyway; some cheap or incompetent '''junk''' may cut-out after a short time on high).
{{reflist}}
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