10mo ago

why don't people say mega meters

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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74 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.
  
  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
  
  Instead of teragrams.
- megaton, megawatt, megapascal, megacandela (for military flares), megahertz, megajoule, megaohm, megabequerel
  
  Megatron
  
  That's a lot of Trons
  
  That's bad comedy
  
  Megan
  
  Damnit Meg
- 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.
  
  Odometer readings
  
  "I've driven 112.326 megameters" takes the same amount of time to say as 112,326 kilometers. 🤷‍♂️

74 comments