>>In a pure SI world, we wouldn't, of course, use liter, with or without >>prefix. However, we'd be using an awful lot of syllables to say the same >>thing. > >True, it is always an interesting collision when the forces of linguistics >(where definitions are based on past usage) meet the forces of metrology >(where definitions are based on standards).
It is also a conceptual problem. Traditional measurements tend to be one dimensional. Area is really 2 dimensions and volume is 3. People are unfamiliar with the concepts needed for 2 and 3 dimension arithmetic. Furthermore, the prefixes work in a different way i.e. kilo means thousand in one dimension, but effectively a million in two, and a thousand million in three.
