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Smoot
The smoot is a nonstandard, humorous unit of length created as part of an MIT fraternity prank. It is named after Oliver R. Smoot, a fraternity pledge to Lambda Chi Alpha, who in October 1958 lay down repeatedly on the Harvard Bridge (between Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts) so that his fraternity brothers could use his height to measure the length of the bridge. Description One smoot is equal to Oliver Smoot's height at the time of the prank, . The bridge's length was measured to be "+/− 1 εar" with the "+/−" showing measurement uncertainty and spelled with an epsilon to further indicate possible error in the measurement. Over the years the "+/−" portion and "ε" spelling have gone astray in many citations, including some markings at the site itself, but the "+/−" is recorded on a 50th-anniversary plaque at the bridge's end. History Oliver Smoot was selected by the fraternity pledgemaster because he was the pledge deemed shortest (thereby making measuring ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harvard Bridge
The Harvard Bridge (also known locally as the MIT Bridge, the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge, and the "Mass. Ave." Bridge) is a steel haunched girder bridge carrying Massachusetts Avenue ( Route 2A) over the Charles River and connecting Back Bay, Boston with Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is the longest bridge over the Charles River at . After years of disagreement between the cities of Boston and Cambridge, the bridge was built jointly by the two cities between 1887 and 1891. It was named for Harvard University founder John Harvard. Originally equipped with a central swing span, it was revised several times over the years until its superstructure was completely replaced in the late 1980s due to unacceptable vibration and the collapse of a similar bridge in Connecticut. The bridge is known locally for being marked off in the idiosyncratic unit of length called the smoot. Conception In 1874 the Massachusetts Legislature authorized construction of a bridge between Boston and Camb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Smoot
George Fitzgerald Smoot III (born February 20, 1945) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, Nobel laureate, and the 2nd contestant to win the $1 million prize on '' Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?''. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer with John C. Mather that led to the "discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation". This work helped further the Big Bang theory of the universe using the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite. According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the COBE project can also be regarded as the starting point for cosmology as a precision science." Smoot donated his share of the Nobel Prize money, less travel costs, to a charitable foundation. Smoot has been at the University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 1970. He is Chair of the Endowment Fund "Physics of the Universe" of Paris Center for Cosmological ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Humorous Units Of Measurement
Many people have made use of, or invented, units of measurement intended primarily for their humor value. This is a list of such units invented by sources that are notable for reasons other than having made the unit itself, and that are widely known in the anglophone world for their humor value. Systems FFF units Most countries use the International System of Units ( SI). In contrast, the furlong/ firkin/fortnight system of units of measurement draws attention by being extremely old fashioned and off-beat at the same time. One furlong per fortnight is very nearly 1 centimetre per minute (to within 1 part in 400). Besides having the meaning of "any obscure unit", furlongs per fortnight have also served frequently in the classroom as an example on how to reduce a unit's fraction. The speed of light may be expressed as being roughly 1.8 terafurlongs per fortnight (or megafurlongs per microfortnight). Great Underground Empire (''Zork'') In the ''Zork'' series of games, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SI Units
The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages and sometimes pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. Established and maintained by the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM), it is the only system of measurement with an official status in nearly every country in the world, employed in science, technology, industry, and everyday commerce. The SI comprises a coherent system of units of measurement starting with seven base units, which are the second (symbol s, the unit of time), metre (m, length), kilogram (kg, mass), ampere (A, electric current), kelvin (K, thermodynamic temperature), mole (mol, amount of substance), and candela (cd, luminous intensity). The system can accommodate coherent units for an unlimited number of additional quantities. These are called coherent derived units, which can always be represented as pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Massachusetts Institute Of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the most prestigious and highly ranked academic institutions in the world. Founded in response to the increasing Technological and industrial history of the United States, industrialization of the United States, MIT adopted a European History of European universities, polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering. MIT is one of three private land grant universities in the United States, the others being Cornell University and Tuskegee University. The institute has an Campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, urban campus that extends more than a mile (1.6 km) alongside the Charles River, and encompasses a number of major off-campus fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
WMBR
WMBR is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's student-run college radio station, licensed to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and broadcasting on 88.1 FM. It is all-volunteer and funded by listener donations and MIT funds. Both students and community members can apply for positions, and like many college radio stations, WMBR offers diverse programming ranging from talk shows to music including RnB to electronic music. As of 2022, the general manager is Claire McLellan-Cassivi and the program director is Shruti Ravikumar. The station's board of trustees is the Technology Broadcasting Corporation, whose members are appointed by the President of MIT. The officers are: President - Marianna Parker; Vice President - Joseph Paradiso; Clerk - Todd Glickman; Treasurer - Shawn Mamros. History ''WMBR'' is the third set of call letters for the station. The first MIT student broadcasting station first signed on as WMIT on November 25, 1946. It had a " carrier current" AM transmitter locate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milestone
A milestone is a numbered marker placed on a route such as a road, railway, railway line, canal or border, boundary. They can indicate the distance to towns, cities, and other places or landmarks; or they can give their position on the route relative to some datum location. On roads they are typically located at the side or in a Central reservation, median or central reservation. They are alternatively known as mile markers, mileposts or mile posts (sometimes abbreviated MPs). A "kilometric point" is a term used in Metrication, metricated areas, where distances are commonly measured in kilometres instead of miles. "Distance marker" is a generic unit-agnostic term. Milestones are installed to provide linear referencing points along the road. This can be used to reassure travellers that the proper path is being followed, and to indicate either distance travelled or the remaining distance to a destination. Such references are also used by maintenance engineers and emergency se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
April Fools' Day
April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may be revealed as such the following day. The custom of setting aside a day for playing harmless pranks upon one's neighbour has been relatively common in the world historically. Origins Although the origins of April Fools’ is unknown, there are many theories surrounding it. A disputed association between 1 April and foolishness is in Geoffrey Chaucer's ''The Canterbury Tales'' (1392). In the "Nun's Priest's Tale", a vain cock Chauntecleer is tricked by a fox on "Since March began thirty days and two," i.e. 32 days since March began, which is 1 April. However, it is not clear that Chaucer was referencing 1 April since the text of the "Nun's Priest's Tale" also states that the story takes place on the day when the sun is "in the sign of Ta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parade
A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats, or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind. In British English, the term "parade" is usually reserved for either military parades or other occasions where participants march in formation; for celebratory occasions, the word procession is more usual. The term "parade" may also be used for multiple different subjects; for example, in the Canadian Armed Forces, "parade" is used both to describe the procession and in other informal connotations. Protest demonstrations can also take the form of a parade, but such cases are usually referred to as a march instead. Parade float The parade float got its name because the first floats were decorated barges that were towed along the canals with ropes held by parade marchers on the shore. Floats were occasionally propelled from wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
100Smoots
1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. In conventions of sign where zero is considered neither positive nor negative, 1 is the first and smallest positive integer. It is also sometimes considered the first of the infinite sequence of natural numbers, followed by 2, although by other definitions 1 is the second natural number, following 0. The fundamental mathematical property of 1 is to be a multiplicative identity, meaning that any number multiplied by 1 equals the same number. Most if not all properties of 1 can be deduced from this. In advanced mathematics, a multiplicative identity is often denoted 1, even if it is not a number. 1 is by convention not considered a prime number; this was not universally accepted until the mid-20th century. Additionally, 1 is the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
69 (number)
69 (sixty-nine) is the natural number following 68 and preceding 70. In mathematics 69 is: * a lucky number. * a semiprime. * a Blum integer, since the two factors of 69 are both Gaussian primes. * the sum of the sums of the divisors of the first 9 positive integers. * the third composite number in the 13-aliquot tree. The aliquot sum of sixty-nine is 27 within the aliquot sequence (69,27,13,1,0). * a strobogrammatic number. * a centered tetrahedral number. Because 69 has an odd number of 1s in its binary representation, it is sometimes called an " odious number." 69 is the only number whose square () and cube () use every decimal digit from 0–9 exactly once.David Wells: ''The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers'' 69 is equal to 105 octal, while 105 is equal to 69 hexadecimal. This same property can be applied to all numbers from 64 to 69. On many handheld scientific and graphing calculators, the highest factorial that can be calculated, due to m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Imperial Units
The imperial system of units, imperial system or imperial units (also known as British Imperial or Exchequer Standards of 1826) is the system of units first defined in the British Weights and Measures Act 1824 and continued to be developed through a series of Weights and Measures Acts and amendments. The imperial system developed from earlier English units as did the related but differing system of customary units of the United States. The imperial units replaced the Winchester Standards, which were in effect from 1588 to 1825. The system came into official use across the British Empire in 1826. By the late 20th century, most nations of the former empire had officially adopted the metric system as their main system of measurement, but imperial units are still used alongside metric units in the United Kingdom and in some other parts of the former empire, notably Canada. The modern UK legislation defining the imperial system of units is given in the Weights and Measures ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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