• Subverb@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Why state a car’s length in millimeters? Why state any length over a meter in millimeters?

    Why doesn’t the world use the decimeter? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it used anywhere.

      • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ve seen technical drawings where the dimension of something is 10000+ mm. At that point I feel like the whole utility of the metric system is moot.

        • cron@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          I disagree with you. If you need five digits of precision, 12345 mm is precise and perfectly usable (and slightly less complex than 12,345 meters). Others might just say that the machine (or whatever) is twelve meters long. And all the math you need is removing three digits.

    • Thisfox@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      In countries that aren’t America, we use centimetres and metres. But it was suggested that yanks are a bit thick and might be happier using woodworkers units of millimetres and metres.

      No one uses deci anything, in my experience.

    • nickiam2@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      Its quite common around here to see height restrictions signed in mm. For example a car park entrance might have a sign labeled 1800mm max height

    • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m curious to see how the arguments for using mm instead of dm varies from the argument for using imperial vs metric. You’re right that there’s way better units to use here, but I think mm is used out of convention. Which is the exact same reason that feet and miles are used, because everyone is used to it.