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.

  • @OptimusPhillip@lemmy.world
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    92 years ago

    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.

    • Cralder
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      2 years ago

      That might be true for science but in everyday use centimeters, hektograms and the like are more common