Oliver Smoot is retiring from his chairmanship of the American National Standards Institute. He lent his name — and body — to the "smoot" — a unit of length, equal to his height (5 feet, 7 inches). In ...

One of the stalwart units of astronomy just got a makeover. The International Astronomical Union, the authority on astronomical constants, has voted unanimously to redefine the astronomical unit, the ...

Conversion of Units: Unit conversion is a multi-step process that involves identifying the starting and desired units, finding the appropriate conversion factors, and strategically using ...

Units of speed are always a unit of length per unit of time. Different units of length and time may be chosen depending on the situation. This makes it easier to read the measurements. For example, ...

There are things in the world that are too small to perceive directly, but that doesn’t mean we can’t measure them. Here are 11 teeny units of measurement used to describe tiny things. When someone ...

When someone tells you they'll be "back in two shakes!" they are guaranteed to take much, much longer than that — at least if we're talking shakes in the sense used by physicists. The shake is a unit ...