this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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167
why don't people say mega meters (lemmy.world)
submitted 8 months ago by joel_feila@lemmy.world to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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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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[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 78 points 8 months ago (5 children)

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

[–] person@lemm.ee 62 points 8 months ago (2 children)

And yet we say megatons.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 35 points 8 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] David_Eight@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago

But only in regards of nuclear bombs.

And your mom (⁠⌐⁠■⁠-⁠■⁠)

[–] joel_feila@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

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

[–] anguo@lemmy.ca 14 points 8 months ago

Instead of teragrams.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 31 points 8 months ago (1 children)

megaton, megawatt, megapascal, megacandela (for military flares), megahertz, megajoule, megaohm, megabequerel

[–] pissclumps@lemmy.world 31 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Megatron

[–] Kefass@lemmy.world 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That's a lot of Trons

[–] metaStatic@kbin.social 3 points 8 months ago

That's bad comedy

[–] Turun@feddit.de 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 months ago

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.

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] southernbrewer@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Odometer readings

[–] pete_the_cat@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

"I've driven 112.326 megameters" takes the same amount of time to say as 112,326 kilometers. 🤷‍♂️