1Micromort
A Micromort is a unit of risk measuring a one-in-a-million probability of death. Micromorts can be used to measure the riskiness of various day-to-day activities. For example, smoking 1.4 cigarettes increases one's death risk by one micromort, as does traveling 230 miles by car.
2Popsicle Index
The Popsicle Index is a quality of life measurement based on the percentage of people in a community who believe that a child in their community can safely leave their home, walk to the nearest possible location to buy a popsicle, and walk back home.
3Pony
According to Encyclopedia Britannica Almanac 2009, a pony is 0.75 ounces.
4Morgen
A Morgen (morning in Dutch) was approximately the amount of land tillable by one man behind an ox in the morning hours of a day. This was an official unit of measurement in South Africa until the 1970s and was defined in November 2007 by the South African Law Society as having a conversion factor of 1 Morgen = 0.856 532 hectares.
5Canard
A Canard is a standard unit of quackery. The Quackery index measures dubious health claims by how often words like ‘energy’, ‘holistic’, ‘vibrations’, ‘magnetic healing’, and ‘quantum’ are used in conjunction with other more skeptical words.
6Donkey Power
Donkey Power, an engineering unit is defined as 250 watts, about a third of a horsepower.
7Sydharb
The strangely named sydharb is a rough measurement for a large volume of water. It’s named after Sydney Harbor. One sydharb is roughly the amount of water in Sydney’s harbor area, about 562,000 mega-liters during high tide. The unit has never gained popularity outside of Australia.
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8Jiffy
In computing, the jiffy is the duration of one tick of the system timer interrupt. Typically, this time is 0.01 seconds, though in some earlier systems the jiffy was defined as 1⁄60 of a second.
9Toyota Prius
One Toyota Prius is a unit of weight that is used to measure the total amount lifted by a weight-lifter. It weighs approximately 1325 kg (2921 lb).
10Banana equivalent dose
Bananas, like most organic material, naturally contain a certain amount of radioactive isotopes even in the absence of any artificial pollution or contamination. This amount is roughly 0.1 microsieverts (a Sievert is a standard for measuring the biological effect of radiation). For instance, to receive the amount of radiation Japan’s Fukushima disaster leaked, you’d have to eat 76 million bananas.
