On Wednesday 10 May 2006 19:59, Linda D. Bergeron wrote: > I have decided it would indeed be easier in the long run even for private > individuals to stay with multiples of 1000. As Pat and others have > suggested.
What about areas? 100 square meters is an are, 100 ares is a hectare, 100 hectares is a square kilometer. 1000 square meters is a dunam, and unless you live in the Eastern Mediterranean, you probably haven't heard of it. It's also called a cong somewhere else. The square root of a dunam isn't a rational number of meters. > However I do disagree with Pat in one small area. The use of "tonne" for > 1000 kilograms. To me this smacks of the Imperial / USC unit of "ton". Thus > I prefer "megagram" for this unit. And there are tons of different tons, some of which are confusing volume and mass. How many tons of heat are in a ton of TNT? Call it the megagram, no one can confuse it with anything else, and a thousand of them are a gigagram. What about the stere? I think it could be retained as slang, since it's one syllable and the alternatives are four. If you steer a yoke of steers who pull a stere of water - the water meter is a meter from the road. ;) Pierre
