How come people say 5,000 km and not 5 Mm?
why not just say millions of meters or Mega meters?

      • LostXOR
        link
        fedilink
        310 months ago

        I’ve always found that strange. I guess a kilogram is a lot closer to “human scale” than a gram, maybe that’s why they picked it.

        • Aatube
          link
          fedilink
          010 months ago

          SI also does meter instead of cm, so it overall checks out.

          • @lud@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            710 months ago

            Having meter as a base unit makes more sense than kg because meter lacks any prefix.

            • Aatube
              link
              fedilink
              110 months ago

              But that is like a giant difference in what they usually measure

      • @takeheart@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        19 months ago

        My physics teacher once told us that this was due to the influence of disciplines that calculate with huge masses, say in astrophysics the weight of a planet or the the amount of oxygen within it. Don’t know how much of it is true but the basic tenet of everyone preferring the numbers that they work with on a daily basis having as few prefixes as possible as it makes mentally handling and remembering them easier.