No good reason, just historical inertia and resistance to change. People stick to what they’re familiar with, either the imperial system or to common metric units. Making a “metric ton” similar in size to an “imperial ton” arguably helped make it easier for some people to transition to metric.
Megagram is a perfectly cromulent unit, just like “cromulent” is a perfectly cromulent word, but people still don’t use it very often. That’s just how language works. People use the words they prefer, and those words become common. Maybe if you start describing things in megagrams other people will also start doing it and it will become a common part of the language. Language is organic like that, there isn’t anyone making decisions on its behalf, although some people and organizations try.
rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
I think it’s written ‘tonne’. And you should call it metric tonne if it’s not clear from the context.
Wikipedia says:
The tonne is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton (United States customary units) and the long ton (British imperial units). The official SI unit is the megagram (symbol: Mg), a less common way to express the same amount.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonne
supercriticalcheese@feddit.it 1 year ago
It’s typically shortened as t.
Normally it’s clear from the context and what units you are using so there is no ambiguity.
rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
I’m not so sure. But maybe you’re right. I thing I was confusing that with tonnage of a ship. But that’s a whole other concept and you can’t really confuse the two.
With the 1000 t thats only because kg is a stupid SI unit and leads to the whole debacle. If there wasn’t a prefix in the unit name itself, I think people would have started to use the SI unit prefixes correctly at some point instead of inventing and omitting other names to compensate.
I think I’ve heard things like megatonne. For example you can say your nuclear bomb has X megaton tnt equivalent.
PP_BOY_@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Can you elaborate on this? As an American without much experience with the SI system, I wouldn’t think twice if someone said this to me
Krukenberg@feddit.ch 1 year ago
The SI unit for temperature is Kelvin
rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
What would you like to know? Regarding temperatures: ‘Kelvin’ is the proper SI unit. It starts with 0 at absolute zero. And then uses the same size for units as celsius uses. So 0°C (the point at which ice made from water melts) is 273.15 Kelvin. 20°C about where you’d wear a t-shirt is about 293 K. So we don’t say it that way but keep saying it’s 15 or 30°C outside.
Scientists do it right. When you’re melting metal or talking about the temperature of the sun, you won’t have small numbers anyways and you won’t use celsius. You can translate it easily, anyways. Just add and substract the 273.15. You don’t need a formula and a calculator like when you translate between farenheit and celsius.
ProvokedGamer@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Wait, what’s the correct SI unit for 20 degrees Celsius then? I’ve never heard anything besides that.