First: The SI unit for mass is the kilogram. That's fucking stupid. A kilogram is 1000 grams, the base unit for something can't be "1000 of this other thing". Because the kilogram is the SI unit for mass, that means that a gram is, by definition, 1/1000th of a kilogram. The stupidity, it burns!

The second one isn't really an issue with the metric system, it's more when people are almost using the metric system then fuck it up, like the "Watt Hour" for measuring energy use. You know, there's already a way of measuring energy use: the "Watt Second", also known as "The Joule"

[–] foo@feddit.uk 10 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

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I am glad someone else has noticed this. Why is my TV's power consumption reported in kWh/1000 hours?

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 7 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Urgh. There's a unit for that, it's WATTS. That's literally 77 Watts.

[–] _stranger_@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

Honestly that's the most aggravating part.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 points 8 hours ago

Yea but people are idiots.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 6 points 8 hours ago

Because your power is billed in kWh. Figuring out the kWh cost of a 77 watt TV is straight forward, but a lot of consumer labeling standards are about quick and easy side by side comparisons as opposed to perfect application of units. Easiest way to give a comparison that's accurate enough and doesn't involve odd numbers is to convert that way.

[–] exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

it's more when people are almost using the metric system then fuck it up, like the "Watt Hour" for measuring energy use.

Energy is just so important to physics and engineering that it will be measured in whatever unit is most convenient to convert in that particular context: joules as the SI unit, watt hours for electricity usage, calories for certain types of heat or food energy calculations, electron volts in particle physics, equivalent tonnes of TNT for explosion energy, things like that.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I don't believe that "watt hours" are more convenient than joules, especially when they're not just watt hours but kilowatt hours or megawatt hours. At that point just use megajoules or gigajoules.

I can understand things like eV where the scale is so different that you'd have to constantly use tiny and unusual prefixes. But, for most other things like calories, it's just tradition rather than a well thought out reason.

[–] exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I don't believe that "watt hours" are more convenient than joules

Clearly you've never had to do the calculations where these things come up, where hours are a much more common unit of measure for time than seconds, so that multiplying and dividing by time is easier when working with hours.

[–] logi@piefed.world 2 points 7 hours ago

The real problem here is that there aren't 1000 seconds to the hour. Then this argument would be moot