this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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Showerthoughts

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167
why don't people say mega meters (lemmy.world)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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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[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Well mainly because where we might need to use these units, we have more standard non si units, we use AU, Light years and Parsecs where Megameters, Gm, TM etc would be useful

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

There's also scientific notation which eliminates having to use these prefixes so you can more easily compare and manipulate numbers.