Space.com rant.

[petermarcus]

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. -- Douglas Adams

I'm a big fan of Space.com. That said, there are parts of the site that bug the bejeebus out of me

Comments

[minouette]

We recently had an excellent public lecture about climate change. The speaker specifically used a horrible unit kW*h/d (kilowatt-hour per day) because it allowed him to always compare apples with apples and never use a number bigger than 40. Though he joked that the physicists would spit at the ugliness of the unit, it was a wonderfully pragmatic approach. It made things transparent.

I totally agree that transparent communication of scale is important - even when writing a technical document for scientists.

Sadly though, I do not think most people know what a million is. People with any facility for mathematics do... but that is not most people. There are even intelligent educated people who just can't cope (or were scared at an early age and never taught how to deal with numbers). Most people get vague beyond 40. I taught a physics for arts student course for years and a lot of bright people have little concept of 'a million'.

p.s. I find "milli-AU^3" pretty funny

[petermarcus]

Personally, I can grasp kWH/d because my electric utility bills me in kW hours (per month, but I can divide). It's not an elegant unit, yeah, but it's definitely practical