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

  • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
    0·
    9 months ago

    Familiarity I guess. Mega isn’t really a widely used prefix outside of computers. We even say tons instead of megagrams.

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 months ago

      Yes, I think it’s a question of use. I can’t think of many examples where you would quickly need to know the measurement to the nearest Mm. Maybe if for some reason you deal with a lot of lunar orbits? Diameters of exoplanets?

      Any earth distances we need to know with greater precision, and any stellar distances are probably better measured in light years, etc.