5 ms·
4k kg is a little bit hard to parse, I missed the k after the 4 on first glance. 4000kg -> 130kg in case anyone else does the same mistake.
by bigDinosaur 4y ago
4k kg is a little bit hard to parse, I missed the k after the 4 on first glance. 4000kg -> 130kg in case anyone else does the same mistake.
- sohkamyung 4y agoI've edited the headline to change 4k (done by HN when submitting the story) back to 4000.
- coryrc 4y agoIf only there was some other way they could use to express a change of 3 orders of magnitude for an SI unit.
- orangepurple 4y ago4e3 kg to 1.3e1 kg
- folli 4y agoThe problem there is that the most obvious solution (4 tonnes) is a non-SI unit (but admittedly widely accepted), while the true SI solution (4 Mg) is even more confusing.
- tzs 4y agoJust compare to animals. They went from an about an elephant weight of waste to about half a donkey weight of waste. That has the benefit of giving people something to help them visualize the difference.
- srcreigh 4y agoWhy do you want me to visualize half a donkey? I propose Great Dane dog as an alternative.
- dmurray 4y agoIt's confusing hearing that a lab went to a Great Dane.
- FartyMcFarter 4y agoDonkeys can weigh up to ~590kg so that's not very useful. I guess you were thinking about miniature donkeys.
- Gigachad 4y agoIs 4Mg that confusing?
- sneak 4y agoYes, nobody does that. The SI base unit of mass is the kilogram, not the gram. (Yes, it's weird that that's the case. No, it's still not a good idea to buck the trend.)
- zamfi 4y ago...which brings us back to 4 kkg -- 4 kilokilograms!
- lmm 4y agoHonestly we should just introduce a new name for the kilogram and make the gram a millifoo.
- Arcorann 4y agoIn the original version of the metric system, the base unit of mass was the grave, corresponding to the kilogram. 1/1000 of a grave was a gravet.
- eru 4y agoAnd from what I heard, grave sounded to much like 'duke' (in French or German), so the French Revolutionaries weren't too keen on it.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoThe French word for 'duke' would be 'duc' (pronounced more or less identically to the English word, for the obvious reason that the English word is borrowed from French). The German word appears to be Herzog. It's hard to see where either word might be plausibly confused with any possible pronunciation of "grave".
- _Algernon_ 4y ago4 * 10^3 kg