A Guide to Imperial Measurements with Matt Parker Earth Science

It has recently been brought to my attention that my video on the A4 paper scale made an apparently unwarranted number of attacks on the imperial system of measurement and would like to, entirely voluntary, to apologize. Why wouldn't you take barley corn, as the basis of your system of measurement should you be, don't know, hypothetically, an industrialised modern superpower. And to apologize I'm now going to give you the NumberHub guide to the imperial measurement system. Because it all hangs together so nicely! You take three barley corns that gives you an inch, you take 12 inches that gives you foot, you take three feet and it gives you yard, you take 1760 yards you get mile. mile alternatively you can split into eighths, each eighth of mile is furlong, of those furlongs you can divide them into tenths and you get Gunter's chain. Each Gunter's chain you can divide into elevenths and that gives you fathom, if you take 15 fathoms you get shackles or alternatively if you take 100 fathoms you get cable. If you take 10 cables you get nautical mile, nautical mile of course being wildly different to standard mile. If you take three nautical miles you get league, or alternatively if you take nautical mile and split it into feet you get 6,080 feet. We're back at feet, if you take foot and divide it in thirds you get hand, of course hand is exactly third the size of foot, each hand if you cut it in half you get stick, each stick if you cut it in half you get an inch. Each inch, if you take three of them together you get palm; palm split into quarters gives you digit. Three digits give you nail, four nails give you span, two spans give you cubit, cubit divided into thirds gives you shatments, why wouldn't you call something shatments? If you take five shatments you get pace, if you take two paces you get step, of course two paces to the step, if you take four steps you get rope, if you take five ropes you get Ramsdens Chain, if you take 50 Ramsdens Chains you get roman mile. The roman mile of course wildly different from the standard mile. Because while the Roman mile is exactly 60,000 inches, the standard mile is 63,360 inches. Speaking of inches, if you take an inch and divide it into six you get picas, if you take picas and divide it into twelfths you get point. If you take point and divide it into 20th you get twips, or alternatively if you take six points you get line, line is exactly the same length as poppy seed. And if you take four poppy seeds you're right back where we stared. Four poppy seeds equals one barley corn. What fantastically logically and consistent system of units.