Hide – also known as „carucate”; it is not referring to Mr. Hide but it has some dark roots – 7th century. It was the amount of land that one man could cultivate in order to sustain one family.

Iron – although sounds “musical” it’s not; this old unit measured the thickness of leather used for making shoes. An Iron is about half centimeter.

Jug – a Scottish unit of measuring liquids; it equals to 1.7 liters; the name comes from “the jug of Sterling” – it was a Scottish vessel used for official measurements.

Karat – used to measure the purity of the gold; the purest gold is supposed to be 24 units. Therefore if we were to take the 14 karat gold for example, we would be talking about 14/24 units purity (58.3% pure).

Kati – also spelled “catty”, it is a Malaysian unit of measuring weight; one kati is rounded to 0.6kg.

Ligula – it comes from Latin and it literally means “to lick”; it measured 11.07 millimeters.

Mandel – it was a unit used to represent 15; yes, it’s German.

O’clock – it comes from the longer version “of the clock”; it dates back to 1400.

Oka – many of you already know from history lessons about Cuza’s “oca”; it was a Turkish unit of measurement, it represented 1.28 kilograms; it was declared prohibited in 1959, along with its Greek sister.

Pot – traditional unit used in Australia; of course, down under, not every pot is the same. For instance, if you would ask for a pot of beer in Queensland, you would get 285 ml; but if you would kindly ask for a pot of beer in Western Australia, you would get 575 ml. Now, think about the beautiful places Australia has to offer you!

Ri – now this should be interesting. This is a Japanese unit of measuring length; it equals 2160 ken (of course it does) or even 12960 shaku! It even equals to 36 chō. It rounds about 3927 meters. Makes sense now, right?

Rick – not a Ricky Martin fan; rick was sentenced to prohibition in US. It refers to a pile of fireworks but its capacity is hard to determine, since the firework vendors “adjusted” the pile as they considered it fit.

Sabin – no, not your colleague. Sabin measures the sound absorption of one square foot of a surface that absorbs sound….. Like a window J

Seven – I know this is continuously returning here but a seven measures a glass (200 ml) in New South Wales (Australia again); it the same as the butcher (presented last time in wacky units part 1).

Shannon – you gotta here this one: you have a coin with two faces; you know that one face will make you win and the other will make you lose the game (50-50 chances); every time the coin flips you can predict the result. The fact that you will not know the result until the coin flips, will make you uncertain of the outcome. However, if the coin has two identical faces, no prediction is needed since the outcome is well-know. This last one requires intense studying. Therefore a Shannon represents the possible outcomes.

This is all for today but next time we will return with other cool measuring units.