"charles" wrote in message
...
you've forgotten the small measurement "a gnat's whisker"

And the "smidgen", with its sub-multiple, the "nano-smidgen".

I remember I was working in a chemistry lab in my year off before university
in the early 80s. My lab supervisor was tweaking the proportions of a
catalyst to find the amount that made a significant difference to a reaction
rate, and he said "It just takes a smidgen" and then went on "To poison a
pigeon". I must have looked mystified by this because he went on to explain
the satirical songs of Tom Lehrer, whose music I came across the following
year when one of my friends lent me his TL tape.


Then of course there's the alliterative furlong per fortnight, which is 1/8
mile in 14*24 hours, so 1 f/f is 37 * 10^-6 mph or 23 inches/hour or 16 *
10^-6 m/s. A garden snail travels at about 13 * 10^-6 m/s so roughly 1 f/f
;-)