3 ms·

Petabytes is a common unit for company scale data but I guess people reading random tech news aren't familiar with it yet. It's also way beyond what we use in

Petabytes is a common unit for company scale data but I guess people reading random tech news aren't familiar with it yet. It's also way beyond what we use in other units. Gigalitre is the biggest SI prefix I have seen outside of bytes.

Robotbeat 5y ago
I’ve seen Terawatt and Petawatt.
hanche 5y ago
Petagrams (Pg) is commonly used in climate science. I always wondered why they don’t write it as Gt instead. But gigalitre? Surely, calling them cubic kilometres (edit: should be hm³, see followup comments) would be preferable?
- nlclimber 5y ago
  No, a gigalitre equals a cubic hectometer.
  - hanche 5y ago
    Oops, you’re right. I think I accidentally squared 1000 instead of cubing it when converting between km³ and m³. Which only goes to show why units can be hard. In the interest of using coherent units, I wish there were a named unit equalling one cubic metre, all the better for attaching prefixes to.
- azalemeth 5y ago
  One of my favourite SI units that is used in climate science is the Sverdrup, often used to describe oceanic or river flows, which is a million cubic metres per second, or one cubic hectometer per second. (1) (1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdrup https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdrup
  - hanche 5y ago
    Non-SI according to Wikipedia, but yeah …
  - jhgb 5y ago
    > symbol: Sv Oh my... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert
  - bluenose69 5y ago
    The Sverdrup unit is tolerated because Harald Sverdrup made many key contributions to the science of Oceanography. He was also a high-level administrator who had a super-power that few administrators have: he understood science as well as people. And, to top it all off, the book he coauthored with Johnson and Fleming is widely regarded as the foundational document in the field of modern Oceanography. There is so much to say about Harald Sverdrup that students quickly become comfortable with the occasional use of "Sv" as an abbreviation for 10^6m^3/s.

Robotbeat 5y ago

I’ve seen Terawatt and Petawatt.

hanche 5y ago

Petagrams (Pg) is commonly used in climate science. I always wondered why they don’t write it as Gt instead. But gigalitre? Surely, calling them cubic kilometres (edit: should be hm³, see followup comments) would be preferable?

nlclimber 5y ago
No, a gigalitre equals a cubic hectometer.
- hanche 5y ago
  Oops, you’re right. I think I accidentally squared 1000 instead of cubing it when converting between km³ and m³. Which only goes to show why units can be hard. In the interest of using coherent units, I wish there were a named unit equalling one cubic metre, all the better for attaching prefixes to.
azalemeth 5y ago
One of my favourite SI units that is used in climate science is the Sverdrup, often used to describe oceanic or river flows, which is a million cubic metres per second, or one cubic hectometer per second. (1) (1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdrup https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdrup
- hanche 5y ago
  Non-SI according to Wikipedia, but yeah …
- jhgb 5y ago
  > symbol: Sv Oh my... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert
- bluenose69 5y ago
  The Sverdrup unit is tolerated because Harald Sverdrup made many key contributions to the science of Oceanography. He was also a high-level administrator who had a super-power that few administrators have: he understood science as well as people. And, to top it all off, the book he coauthored with Johnson and Fleming is widely regarded as the foundational document in the field of modern Oceanography. There is so much to say about Harald Sverdrup that students quickly become comfortable with the occasional use of "Sv" as an abbreviation for 10^6m^3/s.