A Hella Campaign: UC Davis Student Lobbies For 'Hella' To Be Used As Scientific Term

If UC Davis student Austin Sendek has his way, the word "hella" will get its due -- in science.

Sendek, 20, has petitioned the Consultative Committee on Units (a subdivision of the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures) to use "hella" to describe the rarely cited quantity of 10 to the 27th power. Thus far his Facebook petition has 60,000 supporters and even Google has taken notice, putting hella on its calculator.

The Los Angeles Times has more on the genesis of the 20-year-old Sendek's effort:

For Sendek, the idea sprang from a physics class. "I asked my lab partner how many volts were in this electric field and she said, offhandedly, 'Oh, man -- there's hella volts,' " he recalled. "It kind of clicked."

At Google, software engineers, who are accustomed to planting " Easter eggs" -- hidden delights --in their programs, got wind of "hella" through one of Sendek's friends and installed it in the service's calculator. Now users can find out, with a little finagling, that our $13-trillion national debt, when expressed in hella-dollars, is a pleasingly tiny 1.3 times 10 to the minus 14th.

Northern Californians back Sendek's movement, but the Consultative Committee on Units -- responsible for the language of weights and measures and not usually known for whimsy, the Times says -- might be a harder sell.

Still, Sendek is realistic about persuading the committee to consider the Californian vernacular. "There's not a huge chance of it happening," he told the Times, "but maybe if they're having a great day."

What do you think? Legitimize hella or not? Weigh in below.

Comments

[nadreev]

07:14 PM on 07/07/2010

Many are posting derogatory comments about this physics major. I'd like to point out that the accepted name for 10 to the 24th is "yotta", 10 to the 21st is "zetta", and 10 to the 9th is "giga". "Giga" is familiar to anyone who has ever purchased a computer. Given that, "hella" fits it pretty nicely for 10 to the 27th, and it would be a clever way to name this quantity instead of digging up some ancient language. My daughter is also a physics major at UCDavis, it's not easy, go Aggies and go Austin.

[UNLVGOP]

03:48 AM on 07/07/2010

The only thing worse than hearing somebody say "hella" is when they actually talk in text messaging code or whatever. For example, OMG, LOL, BFF, BRB aahhhh! Makes me want to hit them. I think that should be the one exception where violence is ok.

[dsdem]

03:34 AM on 07/07/2010

I suggest the Bachelor of Idiocy degree be created.

[doinaheckuvanutjob]

07:04 PM on 07/06/2010

Uh, this is hella silly.

[ixington]

07:03 PM on 07/06/2010

Most of you appear to be hella stupid, what with your misuse of the word in your attempts to be funny.

[Json]

05:39 PM on 07/06/2010

If this kid wants to do something actually useful, get the US to start using the metric system!!

[Epotheros]

06:00 PM on 07/06/2010

Do you even know why the U.S. doesn't use the metric system?

[Json]

06:14 PM on 07/06/2010

Because we are too lazy and stubborn to convert to the system used by the rest of the planet?
Or maybe we want all of our scientists and engineers to have to learn a new system in order to work with the rest of the global community...

Why do you think?

[nadreev]

12:30 AM on 07/07/2010

My guess, we're hella stubborn.

[GoDogGo]

05:08 PM on 07/06/2010

"Scientific community lobbies for 'Sendek' to be used in place of 'Moron'."

[RickshawJohnson]

04:42 PM on 07/06/2010

If this is going to fly, can we start using "wicked" as a form of measurement now? It's wicked hot out? This whole idea is wicked r*tarded?

[ixington]

07:05 PM on 07/06/2010

Try searching for this in Google: 1 Parsec in hellameters

[doinaheckuvanutjob]

07:08 PM on 07/06/2010

It is wicked hella ridiculous, isn't it?

[RickshawJohnson]

04:42 PM on 07/06/2010

I despise people who use this word.

[doinaheckuvanutjob]

07:05 PM on 07/06/2010

That's hella intolerant of some young folk and their hella slangy ways.

[Matthew Meier]

02:44 PM on 07/07/2010

you despise all of northern california?

[BebeLush]

03:40 PM on 07/06/2010

Hella, no. We don't have the metic system but we allow this crap?

[TheGripester]

01:59 PM on 07/06/2010

I used to carry around a small cardboard box that had once contained small components for Volvo braking systems. Then, when people would say things like "That's hella badness," I would whip out the box and say "No, that's Hella Brake Shoes!"

[pecosdog]

01:20 PM on 07/06/2010

This whole campaign is hella stupid. I can only picture Eric Cartmann saying this.

[latinpoet]

12:17 PM on 07/06/2010

I lived in the Bay Area for 6 years and as a native New Yorker, the "hella" drove me nuts. I've never heard of one word that can take the place of so many expressions. "I'm hella hungry", "This movie is hella weak," "That breezy is hella hot." And let me not forget the many variations (heck of, hell of, hecka, hellya. Just to be clear, Southern Californians find it just as annoying as I did. It seems to be a NorCal thing. Keep it colloquial, no need to inject idiocy in science.

[doinaheckuvanutjob]

07:07 PM on 07/06/2010

I haven't heard anyone over 25 use it in Northern CA. I think it's strictly a youth culture thing.

[MunyaBuddya]

11:50 AM on 07/06/2010

Normally I appreciate the whimsy of stuff like this, but in this case.....
The only people I've ever heard using the word "hella" are Californians and people making fun of Californians, more often the latter.

[thole489]

11:48 AM on 07/06/2010

Hella is much like the long sought after metric sh*tload.