• hperrin@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    I’m always disappointed that megameter isn’t a common word. People will say “one thousand kilometers” instead of just “one megameter”.

    • Klear@quokk.au
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      3 months ago

      I’m a fan of light nanosecond, which works out to roughly 30 cm.

    • Johanno@feddit.org
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      3 months ago

      Megameter gigameter,

      Next thing is one astronomical unit.

      And then we are using light years.

      Not very linear those last two.

      And I am sure that gigameters would still be better than light years.

    • python@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      People will say “one thousand kilometers”

      Will they though? I don’t talk about distances that large anywhere near often enough to really need a shorthand for it, personally. Had to even look up what things are approximately 1000km apart to even know what to imagine it as (it’s about the distance between Paris and Berlin).

      • hperrin@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        Yes, every time I’ve ever heard someone use metric to describe distances of >999km, they keep using kilometers.

      • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Car mileage (or kilometerage, is that a word?)

        People don’t say the car has 200 megameter on the odometer, but 200 000 km. Or 200k km?..

    • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I’ll never forgive the French for going from grave to gram to kg as the base unit of mass.

      All my other base units don’t have a prefix :(

      Such a pity.

      BRING BACK THE GRAVE