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

    • LostXOR
      link
      fedilink
      39 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
        09 months ago

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

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

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

          • Aatube
            link
            fedilink
            19 months ago

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

    • @takeheart@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      18 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.