the metric (SI) unit of mass -- kilogram -- already having a metric prefix is an ugly flaw in the metric system. kilogram, not gram, is the unit upon which derived units such as newton are built.
the force required to accelerate 1 megagram 1 meter/second^2 is not 1 meganewton but 1 kilonewton.
what has been the most costly failure caused by this flaw? how many people have died?
an ugly solution is to never remove the kilo prefix from kilogram but treat it as a monolithic word, prefixing additional metric prefixes.
the force required to accelerate 1 kilokilogram 1 meter/second^2 is 1 kilonewton.
what is the street price of one millikilogram of cocaine?
a tablet of Advil contains 200 microkilograms of ibuprofen.
better would be a completely new word for kilogram. but that would make the metric system unpleasant during the (likely long) transition period, waiting for every language in the world to stop using the words gram and kilogram.
slightly tangentially, g being an abbreviation for gram and for earth gravitational acceleration is confusing: an object with mass 42 g weighs 69 g. how many g is it in?
the centimeter-gram-second (cgs) system of units has the same flaw (centimeter). furthermore, the fact that cgs even exists makes metric hazardous. two parties could both believe they are using "metric" but be off by many factors of 10, for example joule vs. erg. what has been the most costly mistake caused by mixing up SI and cgs?
we could create a meter-gram-second system of units to fix the kilogram problem. we would need to come up with new derived unit names for everything derived from mass. why fight SI vs cgs when you could fight SI vs cgs vs mgs?
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