this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
135 points (97.9% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35922 readers
1037 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] empireOfLove@lemmy.one 55 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

They are "technically correct" measurements since they are a valid prefix, and could be used if you wanted. but they are very infrequently used in any industry. Since most of the time measurements are better served by higher precision (just using Meters) or need no precision at all over long distance (switch to kilometers), no need for excess measurement types unless necessary

[–] XbSuper@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Bro skips right past centimetres.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] vettnerk@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, once all the boomers are gone we’re probably going to go full kPa.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Im_old@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For distance, no. Day to day we use mm, cm, m and km. But in more specialised settings (e.g. construction) I've seen sometimes decameters.

For weight yes, grams, hectograms, kg, tons. Liquids is usually ml, cl, liters, hectoliters (not sure it's spelt that way).

In labs I've also seen also micro and nano of all three units.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 19 points 1 year ago (7 children)

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.

[–] Sethayy@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

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.)

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] Grabbels@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] Jeraxus@lemmy.sdf.org 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

In France "hectare" (10 000m²) is used for fields and burning forest. Beside that deca or hectometers are never used

[–] Michelsup@michelsup.org 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

An hectare is 10.000 m2

And we use hectolitres for wine production

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] thanksforallthefish 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hectares are also standard in Australia

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] OptimusPhillip@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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).

[–] affeauflases@feddit.de 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In Germany Hectoliter is also used to calculate beer volume in commercial settings, like planning for a bar or a festival.

[–] Nikls94@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

„Kommerziell“

[–] dufkm@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] maxwisecracks@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

in school in austria we teach dezimeter (tenth of a meter)

[–] Jedi@bolha.forum 6 points 1 year ago (7 children)

decimeter is a good measure because one cubic decimeter (1 dm³) equals one liter ( 1L )

load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Siegfried@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

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

[–] bookmeat@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

Yes, they are used, but typically in specialized applications which is why you don't see them every day.

[–] Nerd02@lemmy.basedcount.com 8 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] jrubal1462@mander.xyz 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In America, I've seen nurses and diabetics use deciliters in reference to medication or concentration before.

[–] PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] yata@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Deciliters are not infrequently used in recipes here as well. I've never seen decameters or hectometers used by anyone.

[–] space@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] lugal@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

In Germany we only use hectare. Ar is something you learn in school and never use.

[–] Jajcus@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In Poland: decimeters are sometimes used (I have been ordering cut sheet metal priced by square decimeters) , I have not seen decameters in use. Hectopascales are often used in weather reports. Decagrams are often used when buying food where these amounts make most sense (meat, candy).

The 'more exotic' prefixes are usually only used with some specific SI units and in very specific contexts.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] mrmule@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Sweden uses decimeters and deciliters

[–] H4mi@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And hectograms. We just shorten it to ”hekto” though. It’s how we buy stuff from the deli. ”2 hekto salami please”.

[–] PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

The silly Austrians would ask for "20 Deka Salami, bitte." It's weird.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] baatliwala@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I think hectare, decibel are few of them?

[–] CaptObvious 7 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I'm American, but follow mostly Europeans and Canadians online and use metrics in my own head just because it makes more sense.

I gather that the deca-/deka- and hecto- (along with a few other) prefixes are similar to imperial furlongs, leagues, stones, barrels, kegs, and hogsheads: They exist, but no one uses them outside of very specialized circumstances.

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

In metric units, we primarily use the x1000 or x1/1000 steps, with a few notable exceptions. We use the centimeter (1cm = 1/100m) quite commonly, the centiliter (1cl = 1/100l) is also relatively common with drinks, and, IIRC, the Austrians use the deka, short for decagram (1dg = 10g).

[–] FleetingTit@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

  • 1 decimetre = 10 centimetres = .1 metres

  • 1 hectometre = 100 metres = .1 kilometre

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] satai@iusearchlinux.fyi 6 points 1 year ago

Czech republic here: decagram used to weight ham, bacon 🥓 or salami. Usually as "deka" without the gram.

[–] SHITPOSTING_ACCOUNT@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] CalamityBalls@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Decilitres/centilitres are relatively common, but they're the only ones that come to mind.

[–] cabhan@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago

In Austria, some things like ground beef are ordered in decagrams. My wife used to get confused responses when she tried that in Germany :).

[–] Diplomjodler@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

Saying something is 80 meters long is far easier to process than eight decameters.

load more comments
view more: next ›