5 Weird Scientific Scales

No 5. Ulmer Scale

The Ulmer Scale has become a Hollywood-standard for measuring star’s value to a movie, in terms of getting a movie financed and shot. Its inputs are the actor or actress’s failure and successes at the box office, his or her versatility, their professional behavior and their effectiveness at promoting the movie around the country or perhaps around the world, by travelling.

The Ulmer Scale was created by a veteran entertainment journalist, James Ulmer. James Ulmer is a graduate of Harvard. He also has created a “Hot List of directors”.

The list has namely 3 parts; A-List, B-List and C-List. The most popular public figures are named as A-List, less known in B-List and those people who you know just by their face and not so well otherwise are listed in the C-List. The 2009 A-list was topped by Will Smith and Brad Pitt was at number 3.

There is also a D-list on the Ulmer Scale, although it is not official, it lists celebrities so obscure that they aren’t even celebrities in the right sense.

No 4. Kinsey Scale

Well, this scale describes or attempts to describe your sexual history at any given time. It ranges from 0 to 6. If you score 0, you are purely heterosexual and well, if you score 6, you are officially homosexual. You would ask what would 3 mean then? It means that you are a bisexual.

It was introduced by Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and others in 1948. Introducing the scale in his book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Kinsey wrote “The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats”. The scale also has one additional grade, ‘X’, which means asexuality. 

1 on the scale means predominantly heterosexual with rarely acting as homosexual, 2 means a bit more inclination towards homosexuality with still being predominantly heterosexual.

Scoring a 4 would mean some heterosexual behavior with dominance of homosexuality and 5 means a bit more heterosexuality with still dominant homosexuality.

No 3. The Dol Scale

Dol is actually a unit for measuring pain. It was introduced somewhere in between 1940s to 1950s by James D. Hardy, Herbert G. Wolff, and Helen Goodell of Cornell University. I find it extremely stupid though, how would you tell your experiencing a pain of 7 units, if you’ve never experienced the most extreme, like having your hand cut off? Nevertheless, the scale is there, but never found any widespread use. By the way, Dol was equivalent to a “just noticeable difference” in pain level.

No 2. Bristol Stool Scale

For reasons so compelling there is the Stool Scale. It actually is a medical aid that can classify your condition from constipation to diarrhea and it’s pretty detailed too, like it or not. There are seven types of stool on the scale to which yours will be compared, for your well being and better treatment.

Known as Meyers Scale in UK, it was introduced in 1997 through the Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology and Heaton from the University of Bristol and Heaton was the man behind the magic.

If your stool fall into type 1 or type 2, you are suffering from constipation. Landing your stool in type 3 or type 4 suggests a healthy lifestyle and type 5 to type 7 indicate diarrhea. Following is a detailed description of the scale:

Type 1: Separate hard lumps, like nuts (very strenuous discharge)

Type 2: Sausage-shaped, but lumpy (relatively easy to pass, but still very hard)

Type 3: Like a sausage but with cracks

Type 4: Like a sausage or snake (usually smooth and soft)

Type 5: Soft blobs with clear cut edges (easily passable)

Type 6: Fluffy pieces with ragged edges (mushy stool)

Type 7: Watery, no solid pieces (completely fluid)

No 1. Scoville Scale

It was a hard one deciding but, Scoville Scale is definitely the weirdest. It is the measurement of “spicy heat” from Chili peppers. It goes from ‘0’ to 16 million i.e. 16,000,000!

Named after the creator, Wilbur Scoville, the scale was devised in 1912. Actually, he developed the Scoville Organoleptic Test, which was meant to measure the pungency of chili peppers and the Scoville Scale was derived from it. The Red Savina Pepper is one of the hottest spices on the scale with a rating of 580,000. Pure Capsaicin is rated at 15,000,000 to 16,000,000, the hottest! Spicy heat of a chili pepper is solely due to its Capsaicin content.

Some species of euphorbia plants have a rating of 16 billion!