One of the more ridiculous units (that's actually used) we've encountered is the foe, a unit used in some parts of astrophysics. It stands for "forty-one ergs" (it's not equal to forty-one ergs)
@Felthry 10^41 ergs?
(why the heck do astronomers traditionally use cgs)
@starkatt Yes. Which is, let's be honest, an order of magnitude that is best left where it is, safely in the realm of astrophysics and nowhere near me.
I have no idea but cgs is also used in certain subfields of electrical engineering and it's really annoying
@starkatt which reminds me of another ridiculous unit. There are two units, esu and emu, which stand for "electrostatic unit" and "electromagnetic unit". Both of these appear to have whatever definition you want them to; even their dimensions are not constant.
@starkatt they appear to be a shorthand for "i didn't bother doing the unit analysis but it all checks out so i guess it's fine"
@starkatt At the very least, their magnitude is (mostly) constant for a given dimension. The esu is generally a product of statcoulombs, statvolts, statamperes, and whatever other statunits go together to make the units balance out, and the emu is a product of abcoulombs, abamperes, abvolts, and other abunits (note: statunit and abunit are not actually words. I just invented them)
@starkatt People in general disregard units far too often and it's _frustrating_ because units are _important_
@Felthry so it was just yolo units in an educational context? That sounds... bad.
@starkatt for what it's worth we were the only one who struggled with that so everyone else apparently understood it fine
@starkatt this still made our magnetic materials class awful though because the professor did not think about units in remotely the same way we do, and we didn't realize that esu and emu had different meanings in different contexts until way later, after we'd already finished the class