Comment on Are metric measurements like decameters and hectometers ever used?
CaptObvious@literature.cafe 1 year ago
I’m American, but follow mostly Europeans and Canadians online and use metrics in my own head just because it makes more sense.
I gather that the deca-/deka- and hecto- (along with a few other) prefixes are similar to imperial furlongs, leagues, stones, barrels, kegs, and hogsheads: They exist, but no one uses them outside of very specialized circumstances.
N1cknamed@feddit.nl 1 year ago
CaptObvious@literature.cafe 1 year ago
“Similar” = “not exactly”
Do you have a point? Or is this just continuing your pattern of half-baked smartass comments for the sake of half-baked smartass comments? Because we all give a damn what you think.
ravenford@startrek.website 1 year ago
I think the point op is making is with ‘stones’ or ‘furlongs’ etc you need to already know what that unit represents to make sense of it. With metric units, even the infrequently used increments can be reasoned out just from the name of the unit, as it’s a standard prefix in fixed multiples of 10, not a random number that must be learnt. So they’re neither similar or exactly the same in principle really.
CaptObvious@literature.cafe 1 year ago
In fairness, you also need to already know what grams, meters, and seconds represent. And the prefixes are hardly self-explanatory. You’d still have to look up the unfamiliar ones. Just like you have to look up nautical miles or knots.