Hobnobbing with the Philosophers: Ronna, Quetta, Ronto, Quecto

Detail from “The School of Athens”
a fresco by Raphael (1483 – 1520)
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By Maik Strosahl

[Note: Last week I trucked my final load—for the foreseeable future anyway—and yesterday I began working in the Dollar General office as a Fleet Supervisor, basically managing about 20 drivers, most of whom I have trained over the last three months. So, having pulled off the highways and byways for now, I’m adopting a new title for my column, a phrase I’ve been partial to ever since I used it in my poem “When It All Came Falling Down” (May 5, 2021), which was inspired by a quote from Albert Camus.]

As a Black Friday special nobody really wanted, The General Counsel of Weights and Measures—the metric system’s governing body—gave us two larger and two smaller units of measure last week.
    The previous additions to the metric system in 1991 gave us prefixes to describe such vital measurements as a billion terabytes (a zettabyte) and 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10 to the 24^th power) meters (a yottameter), along with the infinitesimal zepto (10 to the -21^st power) and yocto (10 to the -24^th power).
    Maybe for a while it was nice to measure .0000000000000000000000001 liters, but wouldn’t it be valuable to have a way to describe even bigger and smaller numbers? Never fear! After much discussion, a solution has finally been offered.
    Introducing the prefixes ronna (10 to the 27^th power), quetta (to the 30^th), ronto (to the -27^th), and quecto (to the -30^th), which will allow all of us to exaggerate more or care less, depending on our mood.
    May God have mercy on our weights and measurements.
    By the way—the earth is thought to weigh about one ronnagram, give or take an iota.

Ronna, Quetta,
        Ronto, Quecto

When my zetta and yotta
are not enough to please,
when your zepto and yocto
are not close enough to zero,
ask me more,
bring me less,
until all I have is but
one more world to give,
and all you care
is too much concern
for measure.

Copyright © 2022 by Maik Strosahl Michael E. Strosahl has focused on poetry for over twenty years, during which time he served a term as President of the Poetry Society of Indiana. He relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2018 and currently co-hosts a writers group there.