On Wednesday 08 April 2009 08:32:21 STANLEY DOORE wrote: > I disagree with the NIST in the case of kL because L is used widely and > well known in the public sector. Are you suggesting that mm^3 be used > instead of L? Stan Doore
I too disagree with the NIST. A liter is a cubic decimeter, a kiloliter is a cubic meter, a megaliter is a cubic decameter, a gigaliter is a cubic hectometer, a teraliter is a cubic kilometer, a petaliter is a cubic - what? You can't express the petaliter as the cube of a named unit. Likewise the exaliter. Contrariwise, you can't express the cubic yottameter or cubic zeptometer as a prefixed liter. As to the tonne, I wouldn't use it with any prefix. There are so many kinds of tons and tuns that just saying "tonne" instead of "megagram" is not worth the loss of clarity. The stere has been deprecated, but I think it's still useful as a jargon unit, since it has only one syllable compared to four for both alternatives. I still sometimes think in steres, since my father grew up with the unit. Pierre
