[Dr. Sivana]

So they managed to convert pounds to dollars but not grams to pounds..?

You notice how these metric users promote the system because of the uniformity of everything being by 10s?

But they do not follow their own rules for weights. Why not say 3 hectograms instead of 300 grams? Why is the distance between the two most common weight measurements separated by a factor of 1,000? Not 10 or 100?

If you asked 100 Brits, Frenchies, or Candadians how much is a hectogram, maybe one in five would even know, and half of them by guessing. Pounds and ounces work.

[dayglored]

> Why is the distance between the two most common weight measurements separated by a factor of 1,000? Not 10 or 100?

I'm surprised you don't know, being a doctor and thus having a scientific background.

Intervals of 1000 are standard usage in scientific and engineering practice and have been for a very long time. It's not just weight (gram/kilogram). It's fractional time (millisec, microsec, nanosec, etc.), large quantities (thousand, million, billion, trillion, etc. and kilo, mega, giga, tera, etc.) and so forth.

1000 is the accepted interval where you switch to the next name, in most areas of science and certainly engineering. Indeed, whereas "scientific notation" uses integer powers of 10, "engineering notation" uses only powers of 10 that are multiples of 3 (10^3 being 1000).

Aside: the "MKS" system (meter/kilogram/second) has largely won out over the "CGS" (centimeter/gram/second) system which is still used in some scientific sub-fields.