Informal
In everyday conversation, and in informal literature, it is common to see lengths measured in units of objects of which everyone knows the approximate width. Common examples are:
- Double-decker bus (9.5–10.9 metres in length)
- Football field (generally around 110 metres, depending on the country)
- Thickness of a human hair (around 80 micrometres)
- A beard-second is a unit created as a teaching concept. It is the distance that a beard grows in a second (about 5 nanometres)
- Smoot, a jocular unit of length created as part of an MIT fraternity prank
Read more about this topic: Unit Of Length
Famous quotes containing the word informal:
“We as a nation need to be reeducated about the necessary and sufficient conditions for making human beings human. We need to be reeducated not as parents—but as workers, neighbors, and friends; and as members of the organizations, committees, boards—and, especially, the informal networks that control our social institutions and thereby determine the conditions of life for our families and their children.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“We are now a nation of people in daily contact with strangers. Thanks to mass transportation, school administrators and teachers often live many miles from the neighborhood schoolhouse. They are no longer in daily informal contact with parents, ministers, and other institution leaders . . . [and are] no longer a natural extension of parental authority.”
—James P. Comer (20th century)