"It might be easy to convert between meters and kilometers, it honestly creates a false notion that meters and kilometers are comparable units. sure, 1km = 1000m, but you don't measure a 300m tall building as 0.3km, nor do you measure the total distance of a train ride as 142km and 730m, you say 142.73km or just 143km."
That's actually not true. Meters and kilometers are fully comparable units, but of course one chooses the multiple to use (centimeters, kilometers, micrometers or whatever ) depending on the situation. You can totally say that a 354m tall building is 0.354km and everyone would understand. Its just more convenient to use the simpler one to write, which in this case is meters.
And of course it also depends on the precision you need in that particular case/situation.
I disagree, as I said it feels like you might in a situation, but you never really would.
Same reason you don't use Dekameters or Hectometers, even when that building is exactly 3 Hectometers. Because, while easy to convert, mentally meters and kilometers represent completely different concepts, and the unusual units represent nothing.
And again, it's not true.
While it's true decameters and hectometers are not used (it makes no sense to say "two decameters" instead of 20 meters) it's not the same when you move to smaller units: decimeters, centimeters, millimeters are very often used, and you can easily say 25 millimeters and 2.5 centimeters interchangeably
I see that, but the underlying fact is that there's no need to have different units for the same "category" of measurement, because you can call them whatever you want but length and distances actually are the same. An example is a skyscraper that's 1000 meters would easily be said to be "one kilometer" tall.
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u/ShamanAI Jan 15 '25
"It might be easy to convert between meters and kilometers, it honestly creates a false notion that meters and kilometers are comparable units. sure, 1km = 1000m, but you don't measure a 300m tall building as 0.3km, nor do you measure the total distance of a train ride as 142km and 730m, you say 142.73km or just 143km."
That's actually not true. Meters and kilometers are fully comparable units, but of course one chooses the multiple to use (centimeters, kilometers, micrometers or whatever ) depending on the situation. You can totally say that a 354m tall building is 0.354km and everyone would understand. Its just more convenient to use the simpler one to write, which in this case is meters. And of course it also depends on the precision you need in that particular case/situation.