Dekametre and hectometre, rarely. Mostly mm, cm, m, km.
In Europe, hg is relatively common, whereas in Canada, prices for deli products are “per 100 g” instead of per hg.
Also in Europe, cl and dl are common in recipes and bottles of alcohol, but in Canada, almost uniquely mL and L. (And yes, lowercase litre in Europe, but uppercase Litre in Canada, although that’s gradually changing.)
In Italy we use hectograms (“ettogrammi”, “etti” for short) in day to day life when buying groceries. You don’t ask for 200 grams of ham, you just ask for 2 etti.
We use litres, which is one decimetre cubed. We use hectares, which is one hectometre squared. But the beauty of it is, that you can just convert everything to units that are more widely understood.
Hektoliter is common in Germany for measuring quantities of beer (not a single serving, of course, but when buying beer for some kind of venue or measuring the output of a brewery)
I’d say we use every 3 prefixes, nanometerw, micrometers, mm, m, km, than any much higher than that usually uses space units (parsecs, AU, lightyears, etc.)
In my country we use hectometers all the time, we just call them blocks since most cities are on a 100x100 meter grid, making something 4 blocks away to be 4 hectometers away
From my experience in Norway, these are typical in context of daily speech:
Weight (gram): tonne (a substitute name for Mg (Mega)), kg, hg, g, mg, μg (mostly in medicine)
Distance (meter): mil (10 km), km, m, dm (kinda rare), cm, mm
Volume (liter): l, dl, cl, ml
In my experience, the deca-predix is very rarely used. Most of the missing prefixes are just substituted for numbers, i.e. saying “a thousand kilometers” is much more common that “a megameter”. Of course, this differs depending on context, as a lot of the prefixes become more common within scientific fields where the sizes are common.
On a separate note, even the numbers can be a bit inconsistent. It has bothered me that it’s often common to say “a thousand milliard” instead of “one billion” (also note that we use the long scale).
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.
Well, not exactly. Those imperial units are all a unique measurement that one would have to learn to use. The SI prefixes meanwhile are simply powers of 10. Deca means 10, hecto means 100, kilo means 1000. Decameter literally means 10 meter. And so people just end up saying that instead, because it’s easier and conventional. But in some situation where you’re frequently dealing with 10s of meters it might be easier to use decameters.
The system also provides prefixes for extremely large or extremely small units. You’ll be hard pressed to find anyone referring to a ronnameter (10^27 meter). But it’s there if you ever need it, because it’s again just a power of 10. While megameter (1000km) is pretty much never used, megahertz is very common. SI simply provides a unified system and we can apply it in whatever way is most practical.
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.
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.
Well with metric there are alot less words you need to know to use them I think is the point of difference.
Like you need to know that a stone represents a weight, and that that weight is 14 pounds. What’s a pound? Oh it’s 12 ounces. None of those words are the same out of context but all describe a weight and the size of the weight.
In metric you only need to know that grams measure weight, metres length, litres volume. Then everyday use is normal prefix increments like OP said.
And again the prefixes apply consistently across units too, so a millimetre, a millilitre or a milligram will all be the same fraction of their base.
It seems that we’re both fans of SI units. I’m not arguing against metrics. But you still have to know what the words mean, and to do that, you have to look them up. You can also look up deebles if necessary.
And not to pick nits, but grams measure mass, not weight. Weight is newtons. A pound is 16 ounces, not 12. A lot of the measures, such as weights and volumes, use powers of two: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 63, 128.
It’s easy to get imperials confused. That’s why I’d rather call a pound about a half kilo in my head and be done with it.
LOL! I had to look it up too, and I was raised with them. I know the dozen or so that I use everyday, and that’s about all. Volumes are especially bonkers. I can never remember how many cups in a gallon or how many ounces in a pint.
It depends on the situation, sometimes they are really handy but most of the time we stick to kilo, centi and mili.
Where i live, Hecto (100x) is used, for example to measure distances and areas for big properties. 1 hectometro equalls 100 m, or 1 hectarea (hm^2) equals 10000 m^2.
Also, it is widely use for pressure, cause 1 atm is 1013 hPa
Decameters are used but for special situations, like quantifying natural gas consumption
In metric units, we primarily use the x1000 or x1/1000 steps, with a few notable exceptions. We use the centimeter (1cm = 1/100m) quite commonly, the centiliter (1cl = 1/100l) is also relatively common with drinks, and, IIRC, the Austrians use the deka, short for decagram (1dg = 10g).
Add comment