4 ms·
Why do we say 17,000 kilometers instead of 17 megameters?
by llm_trw 3y ago
Why do we say 17,000 kilometers instead of 17 megameters?
- mort96 3y agoI want us to start using megameters. And gigameters. And instead of (metric) tons, I want megagrams. No kilotons; gigagrams.
- llm_trw 3y agoBe the change you want to see. I remember the first time I got those units out of gnu units on the command line scratching my head wondering why I'd never used them before and why it was using them at the same time.
- zmgsabst 3y agoI’m personally partial to attolightyears (about 1cm).
- Chris2048 3y agoSurely you'd use the base unit of time, the second (lightseconds)? atto-lightyear = 1e-18 lightyear lightyear = 3.156e+7 lightsecond Hence, atto-lightyear = 3.156e-11 lightsecond = 31.56 pico-lightsecond
- walthamstow 3y agoBrewers introduced me to this with hectolitres
- darkwater 3y agoHectolitres and hectograms are used fairly often (the latter, daily) in Italian, for example.
- walthamstow 3y agoHectolitre is 100 litres, not 100ml, but hectogram is 100g, not 100kg? Very confusing!
- mort96 3y agoI mean Hecto = 100 Hectoliter = 100 litres Hectogram = 100 grams Kilo = 1000 Kiloliter = 1000 litres Kilogram = 1000 grams It doesn't look that confusing?
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- jagger27 3y agoWell yeah, litres and grams are the base units. Just because 1ml is 1g of water doesn't change how SI prefixes work.
- walthamstow 3y agoI would have thought if gram is the base unit for weight then millilitre is the base for volume, but I must be wrong
- lambdaxyzw 3y agoThat's actually a good question. Why? We have nanometets, picometers, centimeters, decimeters, kilometers, why not megameters?
- ragebol 3y agoI wonder why too. Same for weights: why have a ton (1000/kilo kilograms) if you can have a megagram (which is the weight of 1 cubic meter of water at the right conditions) The only 'commonly' used unit of measure larger than a kilometer is a light year, at least that I can think of. Maybe a Astronomical Unit, but not 'common' I suppose.
- datadrivenangel 3y agoThe mile is larger than a kilometer. But it shouldn't be common.
- calgoo 3y agoIn Sweden, a mile is 10km, not 1.6… so there are other measures that exist, just not in all countries.
- jagger27 3y agoI think in terms of things commonly measured on Earth we don't benefit much from the jump to megametres. The diameter of this planet is 12,742 km. Does it help much to say 12.7 megametres? Not really. Off planet the distances between objects are far beyond megametres. AU, parsec, and lightyears make much more sense.
- dorfsmay 3y agoMost people prefer habits/conventions over logic. I've had people get angry when I tried to use Mm (mega metre) or ask why using some currencies symbols before the number when all symbols for all other units are used after.
- queuebert 3y agoScientists don't use either. If using SI units, they would say 1.7 x 10^7 m, or 1.7e7 in code, which is even shorter.
- mattkrause 3y agoIn practice, people tend to use units that match the “natural scale” of the data. If the data consists of electrical potentials between 0.0000001 and 0.0002 V, it’s way easier to think about it as microvolts, especially if any other is in a complementary scale.
- queuebert 3y agoEspecially in conversation, but calculations are typically done in SI units to avoid mistakes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foe_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foe_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_(unit)
- Chris2048 3y agoperhaps we should use kilo-millions?