A shorter distance is the canvas, which is the length of the covered part of the boat between the bow and the bow oarsman. The length of a rowing eight is about 62 feet (19 m).

In rowing races such as the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, the margin of victory and of defeat is expressed in fractions and multiples of boat lengths. Shorter distances are measured in fractions of a horse length also common are measurements of a full or fraction of a head, a neck, or a nose.

Horses are used to measure distances in horse racing – a horse length (shortened to merely a length when the context makes it obvious) equals roughly 8 feet or 2.4 metres. Ī Chinese foot is around one third of a metre, with the exact definition depending on jurisdiction. It was popularized in information technology as a unit of distance by Grace Hopper as the distance which a photon could travel in one billionth of a second (roughly 30 cm or one foot): 'The speed of light is one foot per nanosecond.' Metric feet Ī metric foot, defined as 300 millimetres (approximately 11.811 inches), has been used occasionally in the UK but has never been an official unit. The light-nanosecond is defined as exactly 29.9792458 cm. Light-nanosecond Grace Hopper distributed lengths of wire approximately 1 light-nanosecond long in lectures, to remind students not to waste nanoseconds For example, 15.1 hands normally means 15 hands, 1 inch (5 ft 1 in), rather than 15 1⁄ 10 hands. It is customary when measuring in hands to use a point to indicate inches (quarter-hands) and not tenths of a hand. It is normally used to measure the height of horses in some English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The hand is a non- SI unit of length equal to exactly 4 inches (101.6 mm).

Rack unit A typical section of rack rail, showing rack unit distribution This means that 1 Hammer unit is equal to exactly 0.01905 metres. The exact definition varies from game to game, but a Hammer unit is usually defined as a sixteenth of a foot (16 Hammer units = 1 foot). This unit refers to Source's official map creation software, Hammer. Valve's Source game engine uses the Hammer unit as its base unit of length. Many of the unusual units of measurements listed here are colloquial measurements, units devised to compare a measurement to common and familiar objects. For unusual units of measure invented primarily for amusement, see List of humorous units of measurement.Īn unusual unit of measurement is a unit of measurement that does not form part of a coherent system of measurement, especially because its exact quantity may not be well known or because it may be an inconvenient multiple or fraction of a base unit. For units of measure primarily used in countries where English is not the main language, see the article specific to that country, a list of which can be found in the systems of measurement article.

Data table 4 liquid measurements