On Monday 26 January 2009 11:41:12 Stan Jakuba wrote: > The megagram, Mg, is in every metrication guidebook I ever saw and it is > "common" in engineering practice and textbooks. It is safe. Because: There > is a whole bunch of tons, tuns, tann, tonnes, long ones, short ones, metric > ones, and some mean mass, other force and some both. Most people have no > clue that those expressions may mean something else that what they think > they do, and therein lies the danger - mistakes, because nobody will "ask".
And some tons mean volume (when talking about ships) or energy (amount of heat removed by an air conditioner). And one kind of ton is about 30 grams (the assay ton). "Mg" is also the symbol for magnesium, but they're unlikely to get confused. Pierre
