On Fri, 15 Nov 2002 11:22:37 Mike Joy wrote: <snip>
> Today in the 21st century we are all familiar with metric prefixes as we > use them every day, e.g. kilo for "a thousand" (kilogram), milli for "a > thousandth" (millimeter), Mega for "a million" (MegaHertz), cent for > "hundredth" (cent coin), Giga for "a thousand million" (Gigabyte) and so > on. There seems to be a problem with the larger prefixes but only when they are associated with the metre. For example, I have rarely heard or seen the word megametre in any context. In Australia, it would be easy to say that Australia is about 4 megametres west to east and about 3 megametres north to south, but this is rarely if ever done. Instead these distances are given as thousands of kilometres and this seems to me to add an unnecessary order of complexity. Cheers, Pat Naughtin CAMS Geelong, Australia
