Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Cursed Units by Joseph Newton

[StormsparkPegasus]

A lot of people have trouble wrapping their heads around the fact that a watt is not an amount of energy, it's a rate. So to get amount, you have to multiply it by a time.

[xramejin]

According to my calculations, the cruising speed of an Airbus A320 is roughly 226 roman cubits per microfortnight

[Dabbleatory]

For some truly cursed units, I suggest the video "a joke about measurement" by jan Miseli, where he creates an alternative to the SI system.

[MarsJenkar]

A lot of these are "cursed" in the sense that they contain uncancelled units, but some weird things can happen _with_ cancellation as well. Take the specific impulse of a rocket, which is used to measure performance. Basically, it's the force gained from burning a propellant divided by the weight of the propellant. (Yes, the weight, not the mass.) Since weight is a measure of acceleration toward a massive object (force over time), you essentially have two "force" units that cancel each other out, leaving only the time measurement. As a result, specific impulse is measured in seconds, with a higher number for a better performance.

[noobymaster]

Now you need to check out part two aswell, just as cursed

[brutester]

There are a lot of those in electrical engineering. We measure op-amp noise in “Volts per root Hertz”

[Zych.Grzegorz]

The 12 parsecs Kessel Run in Star Wars is there because it sounded science-fictiony. The Expanded Universe added an explanation: the planet Kessel is located near a giant cluster of black holes (sic!) so everyone takes a long way around. Han Solos flex in that scene is now about how much shorter his run was - the Millenium Falcon is so fast it can get close to those black holes and not get sucked in.

[neotericrecreant]

CHERENKOV RADIATION!! everybody take a drink!

[forgottenfamily]

Apparently, in an earlier draft of Episode IV, Obi-wan was supposed to react to what was clearly a lie by Han Solo. It appears to have disappeared from the final draft of the script and the EU added an explanation to it which was adapted by the Disney canon - highly modified but the core rational of it being an impressive navigation feat remains.

But when you look back, it makes way more sense for it to have been Han bullshitting. First off, it's Han Solo. Second, he's saying it while claiming the Millennium Falcon is fast so to give a navigation achievement (which speaks to the pilot) when trying to sell how awesome his ship is is just weird. And then there's the fact that just a few minutes later, the Falcon is getting overtaken by Star Destroyers and Luke explicitly calls out Han for claiming the ship was fast.

[jercos]

The real cursed unit on your electric bill goes a step further: your average power consumption is given in kilowatt-hours per day. There are 41.67 watts in a kWh/d.

[gavinjenkins]

There is a reason for the hubble numbers to be similar. Yes sure the universe's expansion changes over time, but things tend not to change that far from their typical rates. The only "coincidence" is that the current expansion rate happens to be near the AVERAGE expansion rate over time. Which doesn't sound far fetched or overly coincidental at all to me. It's like if you take a random person's current height and find that it's very close to their average height during their life. Okay... and? Not that weird.

[hii-people]

You should watch part 2 of the cursed unit series

[Sierra]

This channel makes me feel ... something ... about my life choices. Nostalgia? Regret? I don't know. I got my bachelor's in Physics with a mind towards a graduate degree in Nuclear Engineering. A severe concussion at the end of my senior year put that plan on pause, and well, it's never unpaused. I started working in electronics fabrication and have held various technician-type jobs in industry and academia ever since. The pay's well good enough to sustain myself and the work is usually interesting, but I always feel like I could have made more of myself. Especially since nuclear power is so valuable and important, would I be more fulfilled if I had made it into that field? I don't know.
Sorry for the angsty ramblings, but the TL;DR is that you make compelling and interesting content, and I'm glad you do it.

[Adwaenyth]

I mean we could start measuring in attoparsec. Which is around 3.086 cm or 1.215 inches...

[velvetgrimm]

This content is definitely your sweet spot. I love how you can really show off your unique knowledge in this hard science and math context. Great stuff!

[Merennulli]

I'm glad he goes over the derivation of these. Yes, it's weird and frustrating to have units in situations where they don't independently make physical sense, but we use all these units because the universe interacts with itself in ways that makes them useful.

[NicholasMati]

Another cursed unit is any measure of speed or velocity - not because of a mishmash of units, but because I'm cursed with a nearly uncontrollable urge to commit violence on anyone who says "rate of speed." Rate of speed [thump] is the [thump] component [thump] of acceleration [crunch] along [thump] a trajectory [crack].

[sombreludens]

Did the beginning part about a book and gallons per miles get cut for some reason?

[michaelbobic]

1.21 gigawatts! 1.21 gigawatts!! Great Scott!!

[michaelk__]

I feel like you might enjoy "jan Misali" "a joke about measurement".
I don't feel like it is content that a good reaction can be made to, but I think you'd have at least fun just watching it!

It's a video taking apart how measurement units work and putting it all on it's head to come up with very cursed, often very non useful units.