Uncommon Units of Time and Distance Quiz

Answer: minutes

A kilosecond is one thousand seconds, the same metric prefix as a kilometer, which is one thousand meters. There are 60 seconds in a minute. There are up to 16 whole multiples of 60 in a thousand. 16 times 60 is 960 and subtracting it from 1000 gives a remainder of 40. So a kilosecond is 16 minutes and 40 seconds. There are 3.6 kiloseconds in an hour and 86.4 kiloseconds in a day.

Kiloseconds could have been more commonly used, but the measurement is rarely used because we use minutes and hours instead. For example, we use 15 minutes instead of one kilosecond, and half-hour instead of two kiloseconds.

Answer: gigameters

A gigameter is a billion meters or, more commonly, a million kilometers. A gigameter is a rarely used measurement even to denote planet distances from the Sun, which are commonly quoted in astronomical units, kilometers and miles. The Earth is located one astronomical unit, 150 million kilometers or 93 million miles from the Sun using those common units. We would freeze if Earth were located 150 astronomical units away from the Sun, while we would vaporize if it was either 150 kilometers or 150 miles from the Sun.

Answer: 60

Tierce comes from the Latin word "terce" meaning "third". Tierce is also called third, as the ordinal comes after second. Tierce is 1/60 of a second or 16.6 repeating milliseconds. The unit is rarely used as we normally use milliseconds instead.

Answer: 4

Quadrennium is most commonly used for the interval periods between Olympic Games and leap years. The term is originated from 'quad', Latin for four, and 'annus', Latin for year, so quadrennium is literally four years. Quadrennium has the same root as the more familiar term millennium, which is one thousand years, from 'mille', Latin for thousand.

Answer: jiffy

In electronics, one jiffy is 1/60 or 1/50 of a second, which is the length of time it takes to complete one cycle of alternate current. In computing, one jiffy is 1/100 of a second, but varies depending on the context. In physics, one jiffy is three trillionth of a trillionth of a second, which is the time it takes for light to travel the diameter of a proton or neutron, which is one trillionth of a millimeter. Jiffy was originally proposed as the time it takes light to travel one centimeter, which is 3.3 × 10^−11 seconds, while it is also denoted as Planck time, which is 5.4 × 10^−44 seconds.

Shake is an informal unit of time equal to 10 nanoseconds, which is the typical time for each neutron to cause a fission event which releases more neutrons during nuclear chain reaction. Although atom is familiar as a particle, atom is also a unit of time, which like the particle was believed to be the smallest possible unit of time. One atom was equal to 15/94 of a second or 160 milliseconds. Loop doesn't exist as the unit of time; if there is, then it would be the amount of time to complete one loop, which would be variable.

Answer: 1/12

Line is an archaic unit of length equal to several conversions: 1/10 of an inch, 1/12 of an inch, 1/16 of an inch, and 1/40 of an inch, the most common of which is 1/12 of an inch or about 2.12 mm. The unit wasn't included as part of British Imperial System in 1824.

One of the incorrect choices does have a unit for it: four inches is a hand, which is used to specify heights of horses.

Answer: gigasecond

A gigasecond is one billion seconds. It takes 31.7 years for the second hand in a clock to tick one billion times. There could be some uses for gigaseconds, like determining how long a person lived using the SI system.

A tridecennium is exactly 30 years, which is close but no cigar. Of course, a decade is ten years and a century is one hundred years.

Answer: 1 million astronomical units

A siriometer is one million astronomical units, 15.8 light-years, 150 trillion kilometers or 150 million gigameters. 8.6 light-years is the distance of the brightest star, Sirius, from Earth, so siriometer could have been based on Sirius's distance from us. 20 astronomical units is the approximate average distance between component stars A and B in the Sirius binary system. 2 million kilometers is the diameter of Sirius A, the only star of the pair that can be seen without a telescope.

Answer: league

League is an obsolete unit of measure which had long been common in Europe and Latin America. League is most commonly defined as three miles in the English-speaking world, but it varies around the world from 1.4 miles to 4.1 miles.

Answer: 1/60 of a parsec

Parmin, from "par"allax and arc"min"ute, is a unit of distance where the object shifts by one arcminute in response when the observer transverses one astronomical unit. It is analogous to parsec, a unit where the object shifts by one arcsecond when the observer transverses one astronomical unit. Parmin is 1/60 of a parsec, which is inverse of minutes and seconds since the shift in angle is inversely proportional to the distance, meaning more distant objects would produce smaller shifts when the observer transverses by a same distance and vice versa.

Other units that are equal to one parmin are 0.05436 light-years, 19.86 light-days and 3438 astronomical units. Astronomers never use parmins, but I have couple of examples of usages in parmins. The Oort Cloud ranges from about 1.5 to 30 parmins from the Sun and the nearest star Proxima Centauri is 78 parmins away from us.