Furlongs Per Fortnight

Furlongs Per Fortnight

The official Interesting Thing of the Day style guide stipulates that within reason, all measurements expressed in American or British units( pounds, gallons, miles, etc.) should also be given in S. I. ( metric) units. We do this partly because many of our readers are located in other parts of the world, and partly because metric units just make so much more sense. And yet, all units of measurement are ultimately arbitrary, and however convenient calculations may be with systems based on the number10, there are always other ways of looking at things.

Faster than a Speeding Snail

When I was in high school, for example, I heard someone use the expression“ furlongs per fortnight,” an odd juxtaposition of measurements that struck me as very funny. I thought it would be interesting to figure out how to express the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight. It turned out to be a huge number, over1.8 trillion(1,802,617,500,000, to be exact). A furlong is of course defined as40 rods, a rod being an equally obscure unit of length measuring16.5 feet. Thus you can also express a furlong as220 yards, 660 feet, 201.2 meters, or1/8 of a mile. ( The only people who normally work with furlongs are those who design race tracks for horses— clearly, an animal whose height is measured in hands needs a special term to describe how far it runs.) A fortnight is14 days( or nights, as the case may be). So something moving at the speed of one furlong per fortnight( f/ f) would be moving very slowly indeed. Interestingly enough, though, 1 f/ f is almost exactly equal to1 centimeter per minute; therefore, furlongs per fortnight would be a good unit of measurement for a snail’s pace, which ranges from a bit less than1 f/ f to about30.5 f/ f.

Engineers like to use the term“ furlongs per fortnight” when they encounter an unknown unit of measurement or can’t figure out what the best unit is to express some value. Because this term has come into common slang use in a few academic fields, it often shows up in tongue- in- cheek questions on exams in physics, math, and engineering. For example: “ Determine the velocity of projectile x at time t. Express your answer in furlongs per fortnight.”

A Googol of Possibilities

“ Furlongs per fortnight” has also famously appeared in Google’s under- publicized calculation feature. If you need to do a calculation or convert one type of unit into another, you can type what you want into Google’s search box( or the Google search field in your Web browser, if it has one). Google can work with almost any conceivable unit of measurement. Here are some examples:

Enter315+412 and Google returns727

Enter4 tablespoons in milliliters and Google returns59.1470594 milliliters

Enter65 miles per hour in kilometers per hour and Google returns104.60736 kilometers per hour

Enter35 miles per gallon in rods per cup and Google returns700 rods per US cup

Enter4 cubits per fathom in feet per yard and Google returns3 feet per yard

Enter speed of light in furlongs per fortnight and Google returns1.8026175 x1012 furlongs per fortnight

The possibilities are endless. And the point of all this is… well, I’ll need to think about that. Give me a few microcenturies, and I may be able to come up with one. — Joe Kissell