A MEASURED RESPONSE
A Bushel and a Peck
And a slug, a Smoot, and a beard-second
I remember my grandmother using terms like bushel and peck when referring to bunches of vegetables or fruit. I never really cared to ask for a conversion into how many apples that meant, and I imagine that the answer would have been vague anyway. All I remember is getting to pick an apple from the top of the bushel basket, and my Grandma’s smile.
Of course, you can now look up Bushel and Peck on the internet and find that 1 is equal to 4 of the other, that it originally meant the container and not the items in it, and that it is a measurement of mass and not volume.
You can also find measurements like Sydharb which is the amount of water in Sydney Harbor (a very large amount) or a Mickey which is the smallest measurable movement of a computer mouse. For messing around with math students, I have also made them convert from slugs to kilograms, beard-seconds to feet, and of course told them about every MIT nerd’s favorite conversion, the Smoot.
It’s fun to convert from and to strange and interesting measurements, and it’s good practice with multiplying, dividing, and thinking about a situation rather than just plugging in numbers because you think that’s what the teacher wants.
