Units of measurement quiz: where did the metre, the carat and horsepower come from?
The metre came from the size of the Earth, the carat from a tree seed, and horsepower from a brewery horse. How much do you know about the origins of the units you use every day? Ten questions, one honest scale.
We talk about metres, kilos and how much horsepower a car has every single day. Yet none of these units fell from the sky: some came from the seed of a tree, some from a rope trailing off the back of a ship, and some from an accounting habit in ancient Babylon.
This quiz is about the stories behind our everyday units. The questions are deliberately mixed, from easy to tricky, and a few of them will probably make you say "I had no idea".
When the metre was first defined in 1791, what was it based on?
The word "carat", used for the weight of a diamond, comes from which plant?
Who came up with the unit we call "horsepower"?
Why is a ship's speed measured in knots?
On the original scale Anders Celsius proposed in 1742, what did 0 degrees stand for?
Where does the word "mile" come from?
The okka, a weight widely used in the Ottoman Empire, was roughly how many grams?
The "ounce" used in gold prices is equal to how many grams?
The definition of the kilogram changed in 2019. What is it tied to now?
An hour has 60 minutes and a minute has 60 seconds. Which tradition left us that legacy?
๐งฉ More quizzes
Where Do Paints Come From? The Surprising Origins of Pigments
Why was ultramarine blue costlier than gold, and how did purple come out of a sea snail? Test yourself on art history's strangest paint stories inโฆ
Old technology quiz: what was this device for?
From the slide rule to the pager, from the stencil duplicator to the punch card: do you know what these once-everyday machines actually did? Eightโฆ
Accidental inventions quiz: which one was really a fluke?
From penicillin to Velcro, from the microwave oven to laminated glass: some inventions turned up while someone was busy doing something else. Eightโฆ
Which came first? A timeline quiz
Is the fax older than the telephone? Did the tin can arrive before the can opener? Eight questions about the order of history, with answers that tendโฆ
Science myths quiz: which one is actually true?
Ten claims everyone repeats, most of them wrong. From the Great Wall to goldfish memory, from the ten percent brain to bulls and the colour red: howโฆ
Animal records quiz: fastest, deepest, longest-lived?
Which bird dives fastest, which mammal goes deepest, which vertebrate lives for centuries? Test yourself on eight measured records from the naturalโฆ
Yudum
Since 1998, from all over the world โ chat, radio, games and more.
18+ only โ live chat, voice and video on Yudum are for adults. Why?
Chat since 1998
Chat rooms you can join without an account, voice and video chat, live radio around the clock, games that run in your browser and fresh content every day. No install, no fee โ open your browser and join in.