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] 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 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.