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Earth now weighs six ronnagrams: New metric prefixes voted in

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Re: Earth now weighs six ronnagrams: New metric prefixes voted in

#121

Post by unwind »

anonporridge wrote: post #40
NKosmatos wrote: post #25

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system : “The SI has been adopted as the official system of weights and measures by all nations in the world except for Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States.”

Indirectly false. Even though we don't use metric directly in most cases in the US, the US customary units have long been rebased to be defined by metric units. Inches and pounds are just centimeters and newtons walking around in a whacky outfit.

Well, isn't that by definition true for any system of measurements? I mean, as long as we're talking about a simple straight-line distance in some real-dimensional space, it's going to be possible to measure that distance in meters (or yards, or whatever). Yes I know about fractal lengths, coastlines and so on.

I think the point is that the US customary units are typically used in a very different way, with fractions being way more important than in metric. See the image in this [1] article that talks about drill sizes for DIY use, for instance. You guys go like "oh no the 5/16:ths hole is too small, I'll step up to 19/64ths that should do it". Over here in metric-world we go more like "oh no the 7.9 mm drill was too small, I'll step up to 8 mm".

Again, the fact that it's easy to convert the 5/16:ths to 7.9375 mm is not the point, the point is how the decimal/metric units are used in practice.

Re: Earth now weighs six ronnagrams: New metric prefixes voted in

#122

Post by orf »

rootusrootus wrote: post #108
NKosmatos wrote: post #25

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system : “The SI has been adopted as the official system of weights and measures by all nations in the world except for Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States.”

And the UK, unless for some reason their official speed limits and such aren't actually, you know, official. As a practical matter, we use metric for many things in the US. The fact that we do not force everyone to change their customary units to metric really seems to irk some folks, but mostly outside the US.

Uk is metric, but we do use a mix. Speed limits are still in mph, and we rarely if ever use kilometres for distances. Height is in ft and inches, and your own weight is in stones/pounds. All other weights are in grams and kg, except for some larger ones (industrial/shipping) which are in tonnes. Pints are used only for… pints, everything else is in ml.

And, the best, is “football pitches” which is often used by the news to describe large (but not too large) lengths.

Re: Earth now weighs six ronnagrams: New metric prefixes voted in

#123

Post by nolok »

troelsSteegin wrote: post #49

Via https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03747-9 , "Extreme numbers get new names": The prefixes ronna and quetta represent 10^27 and 10^30, and ronto and quecto signify 10^−27 and 10^−30. Earth weighs around one ronnagram, and an electron’s mass is about one quectogram. This is the first update to the prefix system since 1991, when the organization added zetta (10^21), zepto (10^−21), yotta (10^24) and yocto (…

> Earth weighs around one ronnagram

I think this is a error by nature.com, and Earth weighs around 5.97 ronnagram

Re: Earth now weighs six ronnagrams: New metric prefixes voted in

#124

Post by iquerno »

illys wrote: post #99

Pretty nice table here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix "(...) he had the idea for the update when he saw media reports using unsanctioned prefixes for data storage such as brontobytes and hellabytes. (...)" and "The only letters that were not used for other units or other symbols were R and Q" So it seems the new prefixes are partly initiated by the exponential computer storage needs rather than scientif…

The only use cases I have seen for units larger than 'petabyte' are those representing the maximum allowed file sizes for ZFS, Btrfs and such. I also don't see a point in inventing more prefixes so that statisticians don't have to use scientific notation for large numbers. What use is that? How many people know how much a yottabyte is? If they need to Google the answer, that defeats the point.

1e12 terabytes seems easier to digest than 1 whatever-the-hell-,-I-don't-know-what-this-unit-is-meant-to-represent-byte. Not to mention, easier to read.

Re: Earth now weighs six ronnagrams: New metric prefixes voted in

#125

Post by [deleted] »

wnevets wrote: post #120
NKosmatos wrote: post #25

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system : “The SI has been adopted as the official system of weights and measures by all nations in the world except for Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States.”

Except the US uses the Metric system > U.S. customary units have been defined in terms of metric units since the 19th century, and the SI has been the "preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce" since 1975 according to United States law.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...

[deleted]

Re: Earth now weighs six ronnagrams: New metric prefixes voted in

#126

Post by homonculus1 »

rcoveson wrote: post #107
homonculus1 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth weighs 0.6 yomommagrams

Why is yomomma- a prefix to grams? That doesn't imply yo' momma so fat, it implies yo' momma so .

Because that's where the rhyme is, dummy.

Re: Earth now weighs six ronnagrams: New metric prefixes voted in

#127

Post by Wohlf »

NeoTar wrote: post #115
rootusrootus wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the UK, unless for some reason their official speed limits and such aren't actually, you know, official. As a practical matter, we use metric for many things in the US. The fact that we do not force everyone to change their customary units to metric really seems to irk some folks, but mostly outside the US.

The UK is (still) officially metric, just with a few exceptions - speed limits being one of them.

The US is also officially metric: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...

Re: Earth now weighs six ronnagrams: New metric prefixes voted in

#128

Post by Spivak »

iquerno wrote: post #124
illys wrote: post #99

Pretty nice table here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix "(...) he had the idea for the update when he saw media reports using unsanctioned prefixes for data storage such as brontobytes and hellabytes. (...)" and "The only letters that were not used for other units or other symbols were R and Q" So it seems the new prefixes are partly initiated by the exponential computer storage needs rather than scientif…

The only use cases I have seen for units larger than 'petabyte' are those representing the maximum allowed file sizes for ZFS, Btrfs and such. I also don't see a point in inventing more prefixes so that statisticians don't have to use scientific notation for large numbers. What use is that? How many people know how much a yottabyte is? If they need to Google the answer, that defeats the point. 1e12 terabytes seems ea…

Yes but translate this statement to the 80s and you might have said the same about giga.

Re: Earth now weighs six ronnagrams: New metric prefixes voted in

#129

Post by saltcured »

iquerno wrote: post #124
illys wrote: post #99

Pretty nice table here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix "(...) he had the idea for the update when he saw media reports using unsanctioned prefixes for data storage such as brontobytes and hellabytes. (...)" and "The only letters that were not used for other units or other symbols were R and Q" So it seems the new prefixes are partly initiated by the exponential computer storage needs rather than scientif…

The only use cases I have seen for units larger than 'petabyte' are those representing the maximum allowed file sizes for ZFS, Btrfs and such. I also don't see a point in inventing more prefixes so that statisticians don't have to use scientific notation for large numbers. What use is that? How many people know how much a yottabyte is? If they need to Google the answer, that defeats the point. 1e12 terabytes seems ea…

Hmm, why would you mix 1e12 terabytes instead of saying 1e24 bytes? Why do we talk about 200k USD salaries instead of 2e5 USD? Or why isn't a US postage stamp marked as 6e-1 USD?

Also: in the past 25 years, "tera-scale" (TB and TFLOP) went from a prognostication about future high-performance computing into something you find in affordable consumer products. When campus computing centers are now deploying hundreds of petabytes, it seems myopic to think the PB threshold is anything but a signpost flying by the window...

Re: Earth now weighs six ronnagrams: New metric prefixes voted in

#130

Post by saltcured »

jerf wrote: post #59
krallja wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ronna-Reagan is 10^27 Reagans.

One ronna-reagan is approximately 4% of the sun's mass: https://www.google.com/search?q=%28185+pounds%29+*+10%5E27+%... At least if I have that right. A single Reagan's mass is from: https://www.celebheights.com/s/Ronald-Reagan-1750.html Or, if you prefer, our sun as about 25 ronna-Reagans.

And 1 ronna-mcdonald's is over 9.9e37 served!
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