why don't people say mega meters

joel_feila@lemmy.world to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 162 points –

How come people say 5,000 km and not 5 Mm?
why not just say millions of meters or Mega meters?

74

You are viewing a single comment
View all comments

Familiarity I guess. Mega isn't really a widely used prefix outside of computers. We even say tons instead of megagrams.

And yet we say megatons.

But only in regards of nuclear bombs. Maybe it's because of the scientific origins of these fields. Probably the same reasons why Americans measure firearm munition in mm.

Firearm's ammunition is a mixed bag because many military sizes are standardized with the rest of NATO. 5.56, 7.62, and 9 mm sure; but then you get a bunch measured in caliber .308, .45, .50.

I've only recently gotten my foid card and am learning to shoot and that shit confuses me so much.

But only in regards of nuclear bombs.

And your mom (⁠⌐⁠■⁠-⁠■⁠)

we do list volcanic eruptions in megatons of TNT. The makers of the first a bomb pick it since the largest explosion ever made by then was a ship full explosives and some had calculated how many tons of TNT that ship was carrying

To be fair, mass is weird because the base unit is kg (yes, the name includes a prefactor). I have no idea how they managed to fuck it up that badly.

Apparently they were going to use gram for what we now call kg, but decided to make it kg. I expect it's because we used grams so much for food.

Yes, I think it's a question of use. I can't think of many examples where you would quickly need to know the measurement to the nearest Mm. Maybe if for some reason you deal with a lot of lunar orbits? Diameters of exoplanets?

Any earth distances we need to know with greater precision, and any stellar distances are probably better measured in light years, etc.

1 more...