The thought was provoked by a story about the Flex Power Modules’ 80A BMR510 (pictured). A point-of-load converter power stage that is sugar-cube-sized…
Let’s call them GM units in the official-unofficial Gadget Master Scale*. Of course, half units are allowed, but not in common usage.
Things are sized as…
1 GM Human hair (natch, but not thatch; just one. Nothing is thinner and smaller than a human hair, unless its half-a-human hair…)
2 GM Grapefruit pip (with thanks to our Technical Editor for a calibration note – “Footprint-wise, one grapefruit pip is approximately 10-15 the-size-of-Wales, although one pip has infinitely more volume.”)
3 GM Sugar cube (Bluebottle not included – makes me think of horses and old-fashioned cafes)
4 GM Matchbox (familiar, but less commonly seen nowadays as smoking falls from favour)
5 GM Palm-sized (big enough to grasp but not outspanning an open hand)
6 GM Pocket-sized (a sartorially-based technical definition)
7 GM Boxing ring (as in the LightSail 2 spacecraft)
8 GM Whale (singular)
9 GM Football pitch (for example, a DRAM fab “the size of 20 soccer fields”, i.e. 180 GM)
10 GM Wales (singular, a distinctive country that is distinctively sized as a unit of measurement)
Any suggestions for what should come next? Australia? The whole of Planet Earth itself? Share your thoughts…
*To avoid any confusion, capitalisation of GM indicates Gadget Master scale, with the lower-case gm representing the unrelated unit of weight, the gram, which is one thousandth of a kilogram.
