I’ve learned about them in school, but I’ve never heard anyone say something is 8 decameters long or anything like that. I’m an American.
Valid, but rarely used, as it’s usually just as fast to say “two hundred meters” instead of “two hecto meters”.
However, those prefixes have other (non-SI) uses. A hectare is common way of referring to a 100x100 meter area. And a decare is 10 ares, i.e. 0.1 hectare.
Also: hectopascals.
To be fair, once all the boomers are gone we’re probably going to go full kPa.
Meh, who knows. The change from millibars was quite a while ago.
Right, forgot about that one.
No, some measurements just aren’t used, even when they’d be a good fit.
Like lengths. We never use anything above km. Even for things like space, we say “million km” rather than gigametre.
The closest we come to hectometre is hectare, which is used for land area.
I’d say we use every 3 prefixes, nanometerw, micrometers, mm, m, km, than any much higher than that usually uses space units (parsecs, AU, lightyears, etc.)
Megameters are sometimes used, that’s not true.
Who uses megametres? It’s not something I’ve ever heard in the UK.
A megameters is 1.000.000 meters.
Where do you live and what is your profession? I have heard anyone use megameter seriously.
My astrophysicist friend used them sometimes. I knew her in Texas. She’s moved around tho
Germany, studying Cybersecurity. They are used in astronomy through, only a hobby if me.
In The Netherlands we actually use “hectometerpaaltjes”, which translates to hectometer-signs. They are numbered signs placed on regional roads and highways every 100 meters, which is a hectometer. Although not a direct use of measurement, the term hectometer still is in active use this way.
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We do have a perfectly good word for inch : duim (thumb)
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In France “hectare” (10 000m²) is used for fields and burning forest. Beside that deca or hectometers are never used
An hectare is 10.000 m2
And we use hectolitres for wine production
Mb it’s 100m*100m
Hectares are also standard in Australia
Nz too apart from old people who still use acres.
As an American who has gotten very used to metric units in studying engineering, the general rule I picked up is that you typically only change units every three orders of magnitude. So 8 decameters would typically be expressed as 80 meters, maybe 0.08 kilometers. Decameters and hectometers are a thing, but they’re not common units. Even centimeters don’t see much use compared to millimeters.
We usually go for the 3 order rule, but in the case of areas and volumes, for dimensional reasons, dam and hm make it into the three order rule. Dm (or dam) is not common but dam^3 has some uses, the same goes for hm, hm is used for only special situations (like meassuring train distances), but hm^2 is almost globally used for big chunks of land. Also, with hm^2, we always keep the unit, so for example, Parque Nacional Iguazú in Argentina has 67620 hm^2 (also ha or hectarea).
I’m also an engineer and I generally despise imperial units, but I have to say that inchs are pretty handy and the 1 in = 25,4000… mm relation is pretty neat
That might be true for science but in everyday use centimeters, hektograms and the like are more common
for everyday use … hektograms and the like are more common
[citation needed]
From my experience in Norway, these are typical in context of daily speech:
Weight (gram): tonne (a substitute name for Mg (Mega)), kg, hg, g, mg, μg (mostly in medicine)
Distance (meter): mil (10 km), km, m, dm (kinda rare), cm, mm
Volume (liter): l, dl, cl, ml
In my experience, the deca-predix is very rarely used. Most of the missing prefixes are just substituted for numbers, i.e. saying “a thousand kilometers” is much more common that “a megameter”. Of course, this differs depending on context, as a lot of the prefixes become more common within scientific fields where the sizes are common.
On a separate note, even the numbers can be a bit inconsistent. It has bothered me that it’s often common to say “a thousand milliard” instead of “one billion” (also note that we use the long scale).
In Germany Hectoliter is also used to calculate beer volume in commercial settings, like planning for a bar or a festival.
„Kommerziell“
From my experience in Norway, these are typical in context of daily speech: (…) km, m, dm (kinda rare), cm, mm
Don’t forget the Scandinavian mile! You and the Swedes use it all the time.
Not sure how I forgot that! Will edit it in!
μm and nm used in engineering and science fields fairly frequently
in school in austria we teach dezimeter (tenth of a meter)
decimeter is a good measure because one cubic decimeter (1 dm³) equals one liter ( 1L )
*of water
No, you’re thinking of a kilogram. A liter and 1dm³ are identical.
Haha obviously, too early in the morning ;)
1dm^3
Ah jeez, thank you. Fixed it.
1 cubic decimeter = 1 liter. Period.
I’m a chemistry teacher so I regularly use dm³
Isn’t that just a liter?
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It depends on the situation, sometimes they are really handy but most of the time we stick to kilo, centi and mili.
Where i live, Hecto (100x) is used, for example to measure distances and areas for big properties. 1 hectometro equalls 100 m, or 1 hectarea (hm^2) equals 10000 m^2.
Also, it is widely use for pressure, cause 1 atm is 1013 hPa
Decameters are used but for special situations, like quantifying natural gas consumption
Yes, they are used, but typically in specialized applications which is why you don’t see them every day.
In Romania we use them for measuring areas. An “ar” is 100m^2 or a square decameter, and a hectare is a 10000m^2 or a square hectometer.
In Germany we only use hectare. Ar is something you learn in school and never use.
We use litres, which is one decimetre cubed. We use hectares, which is one hectometre squared. But the beauty of it is, that you can just convert everything to units that are more widely understood.
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1 decimetre = 10 centimetres = .1 metres
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1 hectometre = 100 metres = .1 kilometre
Hektoliter is common in Germany for measuring quantities of beer (not a single serving, of course, but when buying beer for some kind of venue or measuring the output of a brewery)
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In Italy we use hectograms (“ettogrammi”, “etti” for short) in day to day life when buying groceries. You don’t ask for 200 grams of ham, you just ask for 2 etti.
Thinking how I always order deli meat in units of 100 grams, feels dumb we don’t do that in Canada too
Yeah I don’t think it’s very common elsewhere. Right over the border with France they were already saying “200 grams de jambon”.
But I think it’s convenient. Small number make brain hurt less, brain no need to think.
In America, I’ve seen nurses and diabetics use deciliters in reference to medication or concentration before.
Deci is 0.1 and that gets used frequently, deka is 10 and never gets used at all, except in Austria when grocery shopping at the deli counter. 🤷
Hekto is 100 and similarly never gets used, not even by Austrians.
Norwegian here, hekto gets used when buying fresh meat or fish
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Deciliters are not infrequently used in recipes here as well. I’ve never seen decameters or hectometers used by anyone.
These two specifically - I don’t think I’ve ever seen them.
Hectoliters are sometimes used e.g. for measuring beer consumption for an event, decimeters in some informal contexts, some country commonly describe drink sizes in centiliters or deciliters.
Centimeters are common, I’d say more common than millimeters in informal context.
