I was looking at an article on New Horizons, the space probe, wherein they were describing distances in billions of kilometers, an that struck me as kind of poor use of language. We have a wealth of linguistic shortcuts to help us out, here, why do we not use them? A little practice and it would become second-nature.
Like, NY to LA is something like 5 megameters (or Mm — the accent would probably land on the second syllable)
One AU, the distance to the Sun is about 150 Gm, Saturn is typically around 1.4 Tm from us, give or take 150 Gm.
A ly is about 9.4 Pm, putting α-Centauri about 41 Pm away from us.
And so forth. I mean we use the little ones – cm, mm, μm, nm, why not get used to using the big ones, instead of this mucking about with light-years and parsecs and other inconsistent blather? After all, the meter is based on a simple universal constant (the angstrom unit), why not make the universe metric?
Actually, the Angstrom unit isn’t a “proper” metric/SI unit, and has largely been replaced by 1/10th the number of nanometers. Instead of red light being around 3,000 Angstroms, these days they say around 300 nm.
I was in college when this happened and watched with some interest.
(I also remember when the inch was re-defined to be 2.54 cm; before 1977 or so, the conversion constant ran on to more digits, although I’ve never been successful in Googling this.)
ETA: Oops, let’s say red is more like 700 nm or 7,000 Angstroms.
America can’t let go of an antiquated system simultaneously made up of Base 8 and Base 12, do you really think they can be bothered learning anything beyond kilometres? Or pronounce them correctly, for that matter.
Given the ambient use of the 5 K run and the 2 CCs of medication, I would not want to see what would happen if all the prefixes were indeed used. My car has 170 M on it. Give me 5 hectos of chopped steak.
Ah, the hyper-metrification argument - part of what killed acceptance here in the 1970s-80s. The idea that along with changing units, we somehow have to get super-precise in our measurements and specifications, too.
Hence the mountains in Riverworld that were about 20,000 feet high - or 6153 meters.
I’ll simply point out that Jolly Old England, which has gone about as metric as metric can go, still uses (weight) pounds and stone and miles in their classic places.
Damn, we could be so precise in our everyday language. But double damn, we’re so lazy!
This is a dilemma for translators who translate American TV shows and movies. Do they translate 20 kilofeet to 6096 meters (don’t know where you got the extra 57) or 6 km?
Yeah right.
Here in Holland, when you say “ons” (= ounce) that means one hectogram, and “pond” (= pound) 500 grams. There are also still a few sayings that use “mijl” (= mile) but nobody knows how long that is. (Just like in the English speaking world, where at least three different definitions are used.)
But prefixes are for sissies, anyway. Just look what happened to the kilo in kilocalorie. Let’s use scientific notation. And I don’t think the boards support superscript, so that makes the distance between LA and New York 3.983e6 m.
If you say something’s a million kilometers away, people have a (probably incorrect) idea of how far away you’re talking about, but at least they understand what you’re saying. If you said it was a zettameter away, first you’d have to explain what that was, and then they’d say “Oh, a million kilometers. Got it.”
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Like, NY to LA is something like 5 megameters (or Mm — the accent would probably land on the second syllable)
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More like 4 megameters, and I’m totally going to say it like this from now on. Consider yourself to have at least one convert. (I’m going to stress the first syllable though.)
