1y ago

A metric tonne (1000 kg) should be called a megagram (1 Mg).

167 comments

A megagram is 1000 kg, by definition. It's symbol is Mg.
In metric countries, we just use the word "ton" as shorthand/slang for it, since it is an easier term and was well known.
The only reason the US calls it a metric ton, is because they have archaic units (long and short tons).
Metric countries don't call it a metric ton.
- No one in the US knows WTF a long and short ton are. A ton is 2k lbs. And most Americans probably don't even know the exact weight of a ton outside of "a shit load."
  For the most part, we generally only use pounds, feet, miles. Everything else is a mystery. Even ounces, cups and gallons are some fucking magical mystery. Just follow the recipe.
  I switched everything to metric years ago, and have never been happier. It made a huge difference in most of the things I do, having a system that makes internal sense. The only thing I still routinely use standard for is sewing, because it's damn near impossible to find any patterns or things like cutting mats in metric in the right sizes for quilting.
  
  There recently was a discussion on lemmy where several US citizens (one of them allegedly an engineer…) tried to explain to me that metric might be „more precise“ (? 😂) but the imperial system more practical, because „everybody knows what a foot is“. When I asked them to add feet to miles I got shouted at (in CAPS) that noone (ever) does that. 🤷‍♀️
  
  lbs = elbows? 2 thousand human elbows?!
- Canada does, because we’re mostly metric but still do enough business with the US that we’re sorta half and half
- Yeah, but what about the metric shit-ton?
  
  I always forget- is that 100 fuckloads?
- We call it a metric tonne in Canada.
  There's also short ton and long ton which have to be differentiated, but no one ever knows which one they are using.
  
  How to measure like a Canadian
  
  That’s because you only metricated 40y ago.
- I only use that term when I call a lot of items “a metric fuckton of stuff”

There's nothing wrong with doing so. Perfectly up to you, and everyone would know how much it is.

I sometimes use millitonne (mt) instead of kilogram to keep people on their toes. I've learned that some people doesn't like to have their weight measured in any kind of tonne.
- As someone not born to the metric system but who’s tried to lean into it, this is something I’ve always found a little difficult. “A thousandth of a meter” isn’t a useful concept to me. I don’t think we are good at conceiving of things in their thousands, with good proportionality. I would rather just have a singular name like “squajibbles” for milimeters and memorize an intuitive sense of what that is. I realize I can do that with the word “milimeters” too but my brain sometimes gets stuck on unpacking the math. I was reading Dune last night and the expression “millions of decaliters” really stopped me in my tracks. I felt like I had to start with one liter, a sodastream bottle, and multiply it up. I’d rather have some concept like “fuckajiter” which means an Olympic swimming pool and work with that.
  Not really being critical here. Metric is better. But intuitiveness is one of the qualities of a measurements system that makes it more or less appealing and I’ve always found imperial has a slight edge there that makes it harder to just drop as a complete loser of a system.
  EDIT: yes, internet, I know the only legal thing to say about metric / imperial is that metric is the only system and imperial is for American asshole cavemen. Oh well. Fuck me for offering thoughts from someone trying to move to metric. I should hide my shame.
  
  I would rather just have a singular name like “squajibbles” for milimeters and memorize an intuitive sense of what that is. I realize I can do that with the word “milimeters” too but my brain sometimes gets stuck on unpacking the math.
  This is, in fact, exactly what metric users do in their daily lives... We don't do math in our heads every time we measure something. We know from experience how large all the units are and pick the one that's appropriate for a given situation, just like you do.
  When you measure something using inches, you don't then say "it's this many 1/36ths of a yard" unless you specifically need to convert it into yards for some reason.
  Similarly, when we measure something using millimeters, we don't say "it's this many 1/1000ths of a meter". It's just a millimeter. Don't get hung up on the prefix, just ignore it and treat it as a unit of a particular size.
  
  The point isn't to have an intuitive sense of what a millimeter is just by knowing what a meter is. You have to learn both units individually to have intuition about them. The point is to know that a measurement of 500mm is 0.5m without having to do any math in your head beyond moving a decimal point.
  
  I dont see a Millimeter as a thousandth of a meter, I see it as a tenth of a centimeter
  Scale is what matters. when I measure something in meters I dont care about the exact millimeters
  
  Coming from the UK generation that grew up during the decimalisation process, and therefore being equally comfortable with both systems, imperial measures are far less intuitive than metric. Don’t mistake simply being being used to something as it being intuitive.
  We use a base 10 numeric system because that’s how many fingers & thumbs we have. Having a system of weights and measures based on that decimal system, is far more intuitive than a system that scales up through orders of distance using different scaling factors at ever order, is so unintuitive as to be absurd.
  
  Intuitiveness comes with usage. When I think of a kilometre, I don't think of a lot of metres, I just think of it as a single unit. A centimetre doesn't send me dividing metres, I just think of a length about the width of a fingernail.
  
  You just named the main advantage of the metric system as unintuitive and the opposite (squajibbles, fuckajiter, feet, toes, elbows) as the main advantage of the imperial system. Yet, you say that metric is better. I don't understand. Why do you find metric better then?
  I understand that intuitiveness is subjective and that how a person is raised or lectured alters the view on what is intuitive. From a logical perspective, however, I find the metric system much more intuitive as the names of the metrics denote exactly what we are dealing with (except for the case of tonnes). Yes, maybe the wording is confusing. But from the word itself you can infer what is meant, given you know what milli, giga, mega, nano, pico, etc mean. Its just times or divided by 1000. What is feet in miles or nautical miles? Gotta look that up!
  
  if you actually use the metric system, millimeter would become that "singular name" you memorize for a certain length. but you could also tell from the name alone what's it about roughly, squajibbles on the other hand...
  
  Wait isn't imperial the one with asinine fractions?
  Like wtf is a 64th of an inch? Or a thousandth (is that how you spell that?)

I noticed this with vehicles. Odo has 100,000 km on it? Nah, it's 100 megameters. It just sounds cooler
- 0.1 gigameters

Units closer related to everyday stuff are those that stick around. Like horse power or km. People don't use Mm but instead 1'000s of km, even into the million km for cars. Even in space they still tend to use km like for the distance to the moon or sun. Only once the distances get absurdly large is there a shift to either another unit (light years) or the use of different notation (like 3.14E12 m).
- As a Swede, using units that give numbers above ~100 starts to get unwieldy. Hence why we use mil (1 Scandinavian mile = 10 km) once we get to triple digits in km. "It's 60 mil to Stockholm" is immensely more natural than "it's 600 km to Stockholm".
  
  That is fascinating! I had heard of the "metric mile" as being 1500m: the closest you can get to running a statute mile at international competitions.
  But I like this 10km mile idea! We could use something like that here in Canada. Sometimes we say "klick" here to mean km, so I have tossed around terms like "decaklick" and "hectoklick" but people look at me funny.
- The astronomical unit AU is commonly used for things in the solar system. 1 AU is roughly the average distance to the sun, about 150 000 000 km
- I measure my fuel consumption in square millimeters, thank you very much.
  
  I get the joke. But it does not actually work. The unit is meter (to some power) but it is not the same meter. One is for a specific liquid, the other for a driving distance. That information was just omitted to begin with, since everyone knows what is meant with the regular units/expression. But when you would want to do that, you need to put that information back at the end.
- I know the metre has been defined by earth's size, or other various things, all rather arbitrary. Wouldn't it make sense to define it by the speed of light and a light year, divided into even portions? Start by dividing a light year (in a vacuum) by ten, and keep dividing by ten until we get a unit that is close to the useful size we are accustomed to?
  That way we could scale up, and I suppose that's going to be useful in the future.
  
  It's already defined that way - from Wikipedia "From 1983 until 2019, the metre was formally defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299792458 of a second. After the 2019 redefinition of the SI base units, this definition was rephrased to include the definition of a second in terms of the caesium frequency ΔνCs. "
- Am not sure I completely agree with you. Some of the archaic units are still used because USA is so dominant in both technology and advertisement. People living in other parts of the world know exactly how much inch is or gallon. Just like most of the world knows English, even though it's not the easiest language to learn. Simply GB was too big and influential and they left their mark.
  As far as Mm is concerned, why would you do that? If you were making a small panorama or model you wouldn't use 0.00001km, would you? You pick units that are most convenient for the purpose. Kilometers are used for cars and things related to traveling because fuel economy is expressed in such unit, car's own computer measures distance in same unit, speed is measured in same unit. Why would anyone use anything else? 0km until 1000km is perfectly intuitive scale which doesn't get crossed too much. For the very same reason that's why we use square meters to measure surface of a home, because they never go into square kilometers. And square milimeters is pointless.
  It's all about practicality. SI system is great because it allows users to use same unit in different scale and have it be intuitive and easy to convert. Also when it comes to astronomy, there are many units you skipped there. LY is too big and rarely used unless it's to describe distances to other galaxies and size of those. There are AU as some one else mentioned. Earth size, etc. But rest assured when scientists are trying to calculate something, they still revert to good old reliable SI system.
  
  Nobody knows what a gallon/yard/... is outside the USA.
  English is super easy.
  I don't get your stance on Mm. First you use it for tiny values and say that is stupid. Then you hint that going above 1'000 km the km should not be used anymore. Also, 1'000 km are nothing in terms of vehicles etc., driving that distance in one day is nothing super special. A car does 100s of 1'000 km. Hence my point.
  I didn't skip anything, I named some examples to prove or better explain my point.

Megagram is the official SI term for the weight. Metric tonne is non-SI but happens to be equivalent to a megagram and became the more common parlance (where I am, at least) by historical accident.
- Pretty sure they tried to mimic existing units/terms to make it "easier". So they used tonne to mimic ton.
  
  They didn’t mimic existing units, an imperial ton is close to a metric ton, and the spelling tonne is just an alternative spelling of ton. In some parts ton means imperial ton, and tonne means metric ton, but it’s not standardized. In German, where the word originally comes from, it’s Tonne (btw the e is not silent, it’s [ɛ] as in let. Or in Porsche (no, it’s not pronounced porsh…).)

Earth's circumference is 40 Mm. 1 AU is 14 Gm. I could get used to this.
- The moon is 400Mm away. Never say thousand kilometers again, the mega is the way.
  Imaging if we started saying millions of kilobytes instead of GB.
  
  The Andromeda galaxy is ~23.6 Zm away. The metric system reaches far.

I like metric wrenches, if my 5mm doesnt fit I can try the 6mm. Most nuts and bolds are not metric, so I end up figuring what comes next if my 1/2" doesn't fit. is it like 33/64th? 34/64th? 17/32nd?

One magnesium please. yes I'm sure, only one.
- One single atom?
  
  one mole ?

What is this metric shit? I'm an American! I measure weight in American units like the hundredweight and the truss and the slug!
- u guys mesure pressure with elephant stomps per giraffe square feet
  
  You say that like there's a problem. It's twenty three ox-marmots to the elephant-giraffe.
- I don't know what a hundredweight is, but I'm just guessing based on American experience that it's a unit of volume equal to 132 quarts.
  
  1 hundredweight = (1 qt * 32) + 100.7, of course. It’s very intuitive.
- burgers per bald eagle
  
  Chevrolet camaros per gun.
- Ar15s per school shooting.

Sounds good to me 👍
- Seconded. Who do we need to update?
  
  I'll call the king!
  Ummm... I seem to have misplaced the number.

But then what would a metric fuckton be?
- A Megafuck.
  
  Yes I require 10 Megafucks of gravel to finish with the landscaping
- 2.2 shitloads.

I'm an engineer, and I make it a point to teach young engineers that "a ton" can mean any one of three things:
Short ton = 2000 lb
Long ton = 2240 lb
Metric ton = 1000 kg = ~2204 lb
And which is being used is often not spelled out, but is just known from context, and usually should be clarified. I once nearly got in trouble by thinking a measurement was in short tons when it was actually metric tons.
So my own act of rebellion is to use "Mg" when I'm writing my personal notes.
- There is metric ton and this imperial shit. And thanks to metric being highly systematic, "Mg" (megagrams) is actually correct - "ton" is just a shorthand.

After reading the comments, I've noticed a point that is missing from the other comments. We like to measure things relative to other things. Therefore we should use a unit of measure which you can compare the entire range of expected values for that question simply.
For example how far away is my nearest town centre? 1km. How far away is the nearest city? 10km. How far is it across the country? 500km, How far is it across the continent? 5,000km. How far is it around the equator? 40,000km.
By using all km in this case it's easy to get an idea of the relative distances. But you wouldn't measure your height as 0.0018km. Just my own thoughts!
- That's what unit prefixes are for... you can measure your height in cm
  
  Exactly!
- You measure your height in metres as in 1.8m or 180cm and for little things it's mm (millimetres) or cm if it's less then 1m.
  It scales alot easier then the US measurement system of anything other then the simple metric system.
- Lol imagine a country only 500km across.

In Italian schools they teach it as Megagram, since ton is an old term which is non compliant with the SI

I've often wondered why the kilogram was not called the gram when the former is commonly cited as the official unit of mass? I guess it doesn't really matter much since it's easy to convert between units. That's sort of the point of metric, but still…
- Cuz the gram came before the SI system and the kilogram is a much more useable unit. The original m-g-s are based on physical things, like m being a subdivision of the length from the North Pole to the Equator going through Paris, and s being related to the time of a pendulum with certain length swinging or smth
  A gram is the weight of 1 mL of water, roughly.
  
  I remember in some old astronomy textbooks they used units based on CGS (cm-g-s) as opposed to MKS (m-kg-s). It was pretty weird, as they had terms to go with that system like dynes instead of newtons for force. But at least it wasn't imperial.
  
  Which is 1 cm³ of water if we want to stay in SI. And if that's the basis for it, then why not make a gram = the weight of 1 dm³ of water and then we wouldn't need a prefix for weights in the stuff-we-usually-carry-around range. It still doesn't make sense to me to have a prefixed unit being the base unit.
- Apparently it was going to be, but they chose the kilogram instead.
  
  Fair enough. But it's interesting right? Like the litre lines up with the kilogram (for fluid measures) but they don't call it a kilolitre for consistency's sake?

I prefer Gigamilligram

we do call them megagrams?
It's all either Megagrams / hectare or tons / acre in my work...
- What country and industry do you work that calls it megagram?
  
  Carbon forestry. and global, but I work mostly with US companies
  
  Also in the sciences (I'm a geologist), Megagram is often used. Most recently I wrote a paper which included discussion about the amounts of Mercury in the atmosphere, and Mg was the unit used.