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?

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Scientific notation for everything: 5 x 10^6 m. Seriously though, I think it would be easier to think about it in megameters or gigameters if it were more standard to do so.

Can we do 5E6 like on the calculators? Is that common enough?

yeah but sadly not enough people know how to read that. sadface.