this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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[–] alvvayson 202 points 1 year ago (11 children)

A megagram is 1000 kg, by definition. It's symbol is Mg.

In metric countries, we just use the word "ton" as shorthand/slang for it, since it is an easier term and was well known.

The only reason the US calls it a metric ton, is because they have archaic units (long and short tons).

Metric countries don't call it a metric ton.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (2 children)

No one in the US knows WTF a long and short ton are. A ton is 2k lbs. And most Americans probably don't even know the exact weight of a ton outside of "a shit load."

For the most part, we generally only use pounds, feet, miles. Everything else is a mystery. Even ounces, cups and gallons are some fucking magical mystery. Just follow the recipe.

I switched everything to metric years ago, and have never been happier. It made a huge difference in most of the things I do, having a system that makes internal sense. The only thing I still routinely use standard for is sewing, because it's damn near impossible to find any patterns or things like cutting mats in metric in the right sizes for quilting.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago (39 children)

There recently was a discussion on lemmy where several US citizens (one of them allegedly an engineer…) tried to explain to me that metric might be „more precise“ (? 😂) but the imperial system more practical, because „everybody knows what a foot is“. When I asked them to add feet to miles I got shouted at (in CAPS) that noone (ever) does that. 🤷‍♀️

[–] CIA_chatbot 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

Lol, that sounds very much “as a black man”

I’ll tell you, most of us in the states would love a total switch to metric. We use it where is matters most, but we also have an aging population raised on lead has fumes that think anything they don’t know is “communism” or “wholeness” or whatever else the propaganda right spews. Those are the assholes that pretty much stop progress on anything.

I’m big into 3D printing, actually got into the same argument with another 3D printing guy…. And I’m like, literally EVERYTHING we do is in metric. The whole damn hobby is metric.

I hate humanity

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lol, that sounds very much “as a black man”

You mean the „engineer“? Well, what can I say, he was insisting his professor at uni taught him „a true engineer can work with every system“.

I mean yes, but the difference is one engineer is just happily pushing around decimals, the other one goes pale when you ask what 1/5th of a gallon in cubic inches is…

[–] CIA_chatbot 8 points 1 year ago

Hehe, yea, I was poking fun at the “engineer”. There was a congressman a while ago that got caught posting right wing stuff on twitter from an alt account “as a black man” (dude was white of course”

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

lbs = elbows? 2 thousand human elbows?!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

Yes. Jesus, why can't Europeans educate themselves on real measurements! We measure in feet and bald eagles for distance. We measure in shotgun shells, elbows and pounds for weight. We measure in ATNT for temperature. That's Ambient Truck Nut Temperature, which is the temperature of a pair of truck nuts after driving for 80 bald eagles at 40 bald eagles per Active Shooter Warning, at sea level on a Wednesday. It's not complicated.

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[–] ArbiterXero 16 points 1 year ago

Canada does, because we’re mostly metric but still do enough business with the US that we’re sorta half and half

[–] cbarrick 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, but what about the metric shit-ton?

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[–] aulin 70 points 1 year ago

There's nothing wrong with doing so. Perfectly up to you, and everyone would know how much it is.

[–] deekhenbawls 52 points 1 year ago (18 children)

I sometimes use millitonne (mt) instead of kilogram to keep people on their toes. I've learned that some people doesn't like to have their weight measured in any kind of tonne.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I noticed this with vehicles. Odo has 100,000 km on it? Nah, it's 100 megameters. It just sounds cooler

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[–] Eheran 25 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Units closer related to everyday stuff are those that stick around. Like horse power or km. People don't use Mm but instead 1'000s of km, even into the million km for cars. Even in space they still tend to use km like for the distance to the moon or sun. Only once the distances get absurdly large is there a shift to either another unit (light years) or the use of different notation (like 3.14E12 m).

[–] aulin 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

As a Swede, using units that give numbers above ~100 starts to get unwieldy. Hence why we use mil (1 Scandinavian mile = 10 km) once we get to triple digits in km. "It's 60 mil to Stockholm" is immensely more natural than "it's 600 km to Stockholm".

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

The astronomical unit AU is commonly used for things in the solar system. 1 AU is roughly the average distance to the sun, about 150 000 000 km

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Earth's circumference is 40 Mm. 1 AU is 14 Gm. I could get used to this.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The moon is 400Mm away. Never say thousand kilometers again, the mega is the way.

Imaging if we started saying millions of kilobytes instead of GB.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Megagram is the official SI term for the weight. Metric tonne is non-SI but happens to be equivalent to a megagram and became the more common parlance (where I am, at least) by historical accident.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

I like metric wrenches, if my 5mm doesnt fit I can try the 6mm. Most nuts and bolds are not metric, so I end up figuring what comes next if my 1/2" doesn't fit. is it like 33/64th? 34/64th? 17/32nd?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (6 children)

One magnesium please. yes I'm sure, only one.

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[–] FlyingSquid 16 points 1 year ago (8 children)

What is this metric shit? I'm an American! I measure weight in American units like the hundredweight and the truss and the slug!

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[–] over_clox 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

But then what would a metric fuckton be?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

2.2 shitloads.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm an engineer, and I make it a point to teach young engineers that "a ton" can mean any one of three things:

  • Short ton = 2000 lb
  • Long ton = 2240 lb
  • Metric ton = 1000 kg = ~2204 lb

And which is being used is often not spelled out, but is just known from context, and usually should be clarified. I once nearly got in trouble by thinking a measurement was in short tons when it was actually metric tons.

So my own act of rebellion is to use "Mg" when I'm writing my personal notes.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

There is metric ton and this imperial shit. And thanks to metric being highly systematic, "Mg" (megagrams) is actually correct - "ton" is just a shorthand.

[–] WestHej 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

After reading the comments, I've noticed a point that is missing from the other comments. We like to measure things relative to other things. Therefore we should use a unit of measure which you can compare the entire range of expected values for that question simply.

For example how far away is my nearest town centre? 1km. How far away is the nearest city? 10km. How far is it across the country? 500km, How far is it across the continent? 5,000km. How far is it around the equator? 40,000km.

By using all km in this case it's easy to get an idea of the relative distances. But you wouldn't measure your height as 0.0018km. Just my own thoughts!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's what unit prefixes are for... you can measure your height in cm

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

In Italian schools they teach it as Megagram, since ton is an old term which is non compliant with the SI

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (10 children)

I've often wondered why the kilogram was not called the gram when the former is commonly cited as the official unit of mass? I guess it doesn't really matter much since it's easy to convert between units. That's sort of the point of metric, but still…

[–] Astrealix 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Cuz the gram came before the SI system and the kilogram is a much more useable unit. The original m-g-s are based on physical things, like m being a subdivision of the length from the North Pole to the Equator going through Paris, and s being related to the time of a pendulum with certain length swinging or smth

A gram is the weight of 1 mL of water, roughly.

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[–] TropicalDingdong 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

we do call them megagrams?

It's all either Megagrams / hectare or tons / acre in my work...

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