How Long is That? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Full fathom five

The quotation is from Shakespeare's The Tempest, in a song sung by the spirit Ariel. It starts "Full fathom five thy father lies; of his bones are coral made;".

A fathom is mostly used in measuring water depths, and equals six feet, so five fathoms is thirty feet deep.

Answer: Seven leagues

Many old tales refer to Seven-League Boots. A league being three miles, a stride would take you twenty-one miles. A league is about the distance an average man would walk in an hour, so assuming he would walk for seven hours a day, a single stride using Seven League Boots would equal what an ordinary man could walk in a day.

Answer: 4.2 light-years

Proxima Centauri is the name given to the nearest star to the sun, and is seen in the constellation Centaurus, hence the name. Light years are units used for interstellar distances; one light year being the distance light travels in one year.

Answer: One mile

Roger Bannister was the first person to win a mile race in under four minutes. He was timed at 3 minutes 59.4 seconds in a race at Oxford. Imperial distance races such as the mile (1760 yards) are rarely run at athletic events these days having been superseded by metric distances.

The Oxford University track was then called the Iffley Road track with a 440 yard circuit. It has since been refurbished, with a 400 metre circuit, and has been renamed the Roger Bannister running track.

Answer: Two furlongs

A furlong is one eighth of a mile, or 220 yards, or 660 feet, or ten chains. The furlong as a unit is now mainly used in describing the lengths of horse races.

Answer: Inches

"Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds...". There are a number of insects, mainly caterpillars, that move by looping their bodies in a motion suggestive of the way a draper might measure cloth with a tape measure. Not on any account to be confused with a tapeworm.

Answer: 16½ feet

Rod, pole and perch are archaic names for the same measure used mainly by surveyors. In modern usage a rod is a quarter of a surveyor's chain, or 1/320 of a mile, which makes it sixteen and a half feet in length.

Answer: Around 5500 Angstroms

The ångström unit, named after a Swedish physicist, is the only metric unit in this quiz. Defined as one ten billionth of a metre, it is used for the small distances involved in measuring such things as atoms and molecules, thin films, and wavelengths of light.

Answer: One chain

A chain is a unit used by surveyors, and is one tenth of a furlong, or one eightieth of a mile, which makes it 22 yards in length. Incidentally an acre is the area of a rectangle one furlong by one chain.

Answer: Thirty astronomical units

The astronomical unit is defined as the average distance of the Earth from the Sun. The planet Neptune is about thirty times further from the Sun than the Earth. There are 63241 AUs in a lightyear.