The Sizesaurus: From Hectares to Decibels to Calories, a Witty Compendium of Measurements
by By Strauss, Stephen
Category: Humor , General

The Sizesaurus is a book for every bewildered baker who's puzzled over how skimpy a "scant" teaspoon of cinnamon should be, for every rock 'n' roll fan who'd wondered about the potential hearing damage from amplified music, and for every armchair scientist who'd like to know how big the Big Bang really was. Stephen Strauss's entertaining compendium of measurement facts and comparisons will help readers answer hundreds of perplexing questions that are rarely solved in conventional reference books.Strauss considers the entire world of measuring, and discovers that every method of measurement - from biblical times to the present - speaks volumes about the cultural assumptions of the society in which each originates.In later sections Strauss moves on to the Wordsaurus, a complete glossary of measurement terms, and finally to the Sizesaurus itself, in which detailed conversion tables provide common equivalents of scientific measurements. These handy conversion tables compare ounces against centigrams, inches against centimeters, Celsius against Fahrenheit, and so on.The Sizesaurus is truly a thesaurus of measurements that allows readers to understand how measurement affects everything in our world, from sound to heat to food to computers to electricity to outer space.