On Wed, 26 Jun 2002 12:51:06  
 Wizard of OS wrote:
>L/100 km ISN'T absolutely not weird, most of you are used to mpg therefore
>you suggest km/L!
>
>Mn ist too long
>
I suppose you meant Mm, not Mn...

Dear Wiz, please notice the following aspects.  Firstly, L/100 km is not proper ratio 
writing (I'm sorry for saying it, but it ISN'T).  It could be if we had a prefix for 
10 to the power of 5, which we don't.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the use of Mm would "get rid" of the 
uncomfortable (for many!) decimal point which is usually associated with such figures 
(example, 8.4 l/100 km, 6.7 l/100 km, etc, which would evidently be written as 84 l/Mm 
and 67 l/Mm, respectively).

>100 km is a typical distance you travel, come to europe and you'll see
>everyone knows the worth of L/100 km
>...
If one thinks of traveling, Wiz, Mm could also be just as... prevalent/convenient, 
especially for countries like ours, Brazil, Canada, the US... where travel distances 
can be quite big.  And if one is doing long traveling and one knows its car tank's 
capacity one could figure out how many tankfuls of fuel they could require for a trip, 
say, 2.5 Mm long.  Example: suppose the tank's capacity is 50 l (a very common figure 
nowadays), suppose fuel consumption is 80 l/Mm.  2.5 times that gives 200 l; divided 
by tank capacity gives 4 (200/50).  Therefore, it would cost this individual 4 tanks 
to make this trip, and at a cost of, say, 0.68 $ per liter, 136 $ altogether!  Simple 
and convenient, wouldn't you say?...

So...  I'm hereby providing some... ammunition for the support of publishing ratios 
like that (volume by distance, even though I'd still prefer km/l as it would be much 
more convenient for the regular day-to-day commuting that the overwhelming majority of 
people engage in), except that the use of Mm would look much cleaner!

(Note: Please also notice that the use of increments of 100 km would not be a problem 
if the figure comes in Mm, just move a decimal point to the left and presto, you're 
done.  No sweat!  Wonders of the SI system...  ;-)    )

Marcus


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