Here are a few more. Another measurement that i use is an inch made by bending my ring finger into a tabletop shape. From the tiniest features on a microchip through standard threads on nuts and bolts. It does not include derived units further unless they are also themselves human based. What an interesting post. This gives him a total of 96 degrees zero being the freezing point of brine and 96 in his somewhat inaccurate reading the average temperature of human blood.
The digit was the smallest basic unit being the breadth of a finger. A handful is a rough measurement of the quantity of dry substances that can fit into a cupped hand. Accurate length measurement and precise definition are needed throughout the modern world. The width of your own palm the length of your own foot and so on. The romans used this measurement and so can you. The ancient egyptian units of measurement are those used by the dynasties of ancient egypt prior to its incorporation in the roman empire and general adoption of roman greek and byzantine units of measurementthe units of length seem to have originally been anthropic based on various parts of the human body although these were standardized using cubit rods strands of rope and official.
These units are thus considered to be human scale and anthropocentric. Stretch out your hand so that the tip of your thumb is as far away as possible from the tip of your pinky. Then wherever you are. Example chefs use handfuls to measure grains rice. Measurement is conventionally done in multiples of 2 3 and 4 so fahrenheit splits his scale into 12 sections each of them divided into 8 equal parts. The quantity and the weight of the substance can be roughly identified.
It probably goes without saying that the unit foot was based on the length of a mans foot. These estimates are just that. In body based units of measurement at interesting thing of the day i listed a few such historical units of measure which can still come in handy for rough approximations if you dont have a ruler or tape. Devin johnston on january 21 2009 259 am. This is a list of units of measure based on human body parts or the attributes or abilities of humans. Ancient measurement of length was based on the human body for example the length of a foot the length of a stride the span of a hand.
The cubit was just one of numerous units of measurement based on the typical size of body parts. This ignores the way that measuring grew up with people measuring shorter lengths using other parts of the human body. By using a light source of known and stable wavelength lengths up to 100 metres can be directly measured with accuracies up to 1 part in a few million. 10 responses to body parts as tools of measurement chris on january 21 2009 136 am. Related to the last point the french word for inch is pouce which also. The handful measurement of objects using body parts.
A more accurate way use your body parts to estimate length is to know your own measurements. Before we had precise standardized units of measure such as meters and feet lengths and even ocasionally volumes were reckoned based on the average dimensions of human body parts.
Gallery of Ancient Measurement Using Body Parts
