• bob_lemon@feddit.org
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    14 hours ago

    A great example of why football pitches are used. People cannot visualize an area of 1500 km², because nobody has ever seen such an area while being aware/told that that is the size of said area.

    Most people in Europe knows roughly how large a football pitch is, and might even be able to visualize an area covered by 600 of those.

    Although I guess “4km²/day” isn’t that bad to visualize either.

    • Goudewup@feddit.nl
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      12 hours ago

      I have never in my life seen 600 football pitches. And I find it hard to visualize what that would look like. Surely if we’re going to draw a comparison there is something more sensible to use?

      • bob_lemon@feddit.org
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        12 hours ago

        That’s why in Germany, we also use Saarland (2570km²) as a reference size, but that is a bit too much here

        /s (the suggestion, we actually do use Saarland all the time)

    • Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org
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      14 hours ago

      People cannot visualize an area of 1500 km²

      That’s where hectares are useful and a sensible, well known metric.

      • mhague@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        How do you guys reach a point where you’re arguing for less effective science communication? They’re summing up values as universally recognized objects. Wow! That sounds like the perfect way to communicate with people.

        It’s such a no brainer. The “anything but metric” meme turned people into dorks.

      • da_cow (she/her)@feddit.org
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        11 hours ago

        Only downside is, that most people usually dont know how mich a hectare is. It usually only gets used in the context of farming (at least I havent heard it outside that context)