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STANDARD BANANA UNIT (SBU)
Document Type: Measurement Standard
Issued By: [FOUNDATION DESIGNATION REDACTED] Standards & Methodology Committee
Ratified: [DATE REDACTED]
Status: Ratified for general use across all applicable departments and classifications
Purpose#
This document defines the Standard Banana Unit (SBU) as an official unit of combined volumetric and mass measurement, ratified for use in any context where conventional metric units fail to communicate practical, intuitive capacity to non-specialist personnel.
The SBU is not a replacement for the metric system. It is a supplement for situations where the metric system is technically correct and operationally useless.
Definition#
One Standard Banana Unit (1 SBU) is defined as the combined volume and mass of a single FSB-7 Reference Banana, specified as follows:
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Length | 18 cm +/- 1 cm |
| Mass | 118 g +/- 2 g |
| Volume | ~150 ml |
| State | Frozen, unpeeled |
| Designation | FSB-7 |
A physical FSB-7 Reference Banana is maintained in controlled cold storage at [LOCATION REDACTED]. All formal SBU calibration is performed against this standard. The Reference Banana is not a food item. It is a measurement instrument. It is not to be consumed, handled without authorization, or referred to by the nickname it has acquired among junior staff. The committee is aware of the nickname. The committee does not find it funny.
The FSB-7 designation was assigned at ratification. There were no FSB-1 through FSB-6. The committee numbered it FSB-7 because a higher designation number implied prior iteration and therefore rigor. This decision is documented here in the interest of institutional transparency.
Selection Process#
The FSB-7 banana was selected following a formal evaluation process in which candidate reference objects were assessed against four criteria: dimensional consistency, global availability, intuitive recognizability, and resistance to edge case abuse.
The following objects were formally considered and rejected:
Golf Ball: Eliminated in the first round. Dimensionally consistent and globally available, but produced nonsensical results when applied to irregularly shaped objects. A container rated for "forty golf balls" communicates nothing useful about whether a laptop fits inside it. Additionally,
one committee member noted that golf balls are "annoying to think about." This was recorded in the minutes without further comment.
Standard Brick: Strong dimensional consistency. Rejected on the grounds that bricks vary meaningfully by region and manufacturing standard, which is precisely the problem the SBU was created to solve. The irony was noted.
Liter of Water: Proposed as a means of simply re-branding the liter. Rejected unanimously. The committee was not convened to rename the liter.
Adult Male Shoe (Size 10, US): Surprisingly competitive through mid-evaluation. Eliminated after it became clear that no two committee members agreed on what a size 10 shoe looked like, which was felt to undermine the standard somewhat.
Why the committee member brought this to discussion when the size shoe he wears is a 8 we are unsure.
The Banana: Bananas are available in virtually every region Foundation personnel operate in. They are immediately recognizable across cultures. Their dimensions are consistent enough to specify tightly and intuitive enough that field personnel grasp the scale of a measurement without conversion. They are also, critically, funny, a property the committee initially resisted and eventually conceded was an asset, as personnel are significantly more likely to remember and correctly apply a measurement standard that they find amusing.
The vote was not unanimous. The dissenting member's objection is preserved in Appendix A. It is one sentence long. It simply reads “We are a serious organization.”
The member was invited to the discussion to be an opposing force, however they were unco-operative and ultimately ignored by most other committee members
Usage#
SBU expresses capacity as the number of FSB-7 Reference Bananas that could be stored, contained, or accommodated simultaneously, accounting for both volume and mass constraints. Both apply. A container rated for 12 SBU cannot store twelve bananas if the bananas collectively exceed its mass rating, and vice versa.
SBU is appropriate for use in any capacity-related reporting where intuitive communication is a priority. It is not appropriate as a substitute for precise engineering specifications. If you are building something, use metric units. If you are explaining to a field agent how much something holds, use SBU.
Figures should always be reported with appropriate tolerance notation:
- +/- : Rated capacity with acceptable variance
- + : Rated capacity with no established upper bound