A “beard second” is a humorous measure of length based on the distance a stubble hair grows in one second. It is not an official scientific measurement and is used jokingly in certain contexts. The exact length is debated, with some sources quoting it as around 10 nanometers while others use only 5 nm.
A stubble second is a measure of length based on the distance a stubble hair grows in one second of time. This is similar, in structure but not in quantitative value, to a light-year, which is a measure of length equal to the distance light travels in one year. While a light year is a very long distance, due to the tremendous speed of light, a beard second is quite small as hair grows at a very slow rate. The exact length this equals is the basis for some debate, and some sources quote it as around 10 nanometers (nm) while other sources use only 5 nm.
There are a number of ridiculous or unnecessarily complicated measurements used, often unofficially, in physics and engineering. In quantum physics and other disciplines that use extremely small measurements of distance and space, one of these measurements is the second-beard. There are two different values that can be used for beard-second, based on the fact that beard follicles can grow at different rates on different people. The larger of the two sizes is 10 nm, while the smaller size is 5 nm long; a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter (m), or about three-billionths of a foot, in length.
Due to both the silly nature of a shave second and the fact that it’s not perfectly quantifiable as a standard measurement, it’s not officially used in science. It may be used, jokingly, in certain scientific and engineering contexts, where it is typically used simply to indicate extremely close range. Using the 5 nm beard second measurement, 1 meter would be approximately 200 million beard seconds, while a foot would be just under 61 million beard seconds. Since a year consists of about 31.5 million seconds, using a 5 nm measurement of a second beard, then a beard grows about 0.5 feet (about 15 cm) per year.
This is just one of several rather silly or unusual measurements that can be used when documenting distances or amounts, including the rather unusual distance known as a “smoot”. A smoot is approximately 5 feet 7 inches (170 cm) long and is based on the height of Oliver R. Smoot, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student in 1958. Oliver Smoot was used by his fellow students to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge, about 364.4 smoots long (just over 2,034 feet or 620 m). Both the second beard and the smoot can be used as a unit conversion in the Google® calculator via search engine input, which uses the 5 nm value.
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