mightyyid

Chaps

For some work I am doing, I requested the amount of a particular liquid (actually an oil) that was used in a year, and the reply I received was 6,000 kilo litres - this came from a Japanese company but was written in English.

I need to know what a kilo litre is - is it literally a poor translation and it actually means a thousands litres - equating in this example to 6,000,000 litres? Or should it actually be kilolitre - all one word?

Or does it have some other implication that I am unaware of?

It is fairly crucial that I get this right, so anyone who can shed some light on this would be a top star!

Thanks

Andy

FlightMan

A kilo litre is 1000 litres.

Like a kilometre is 1000m's

HankScorpio

Yep, section 4 on here
Bartlett's Guide to SI Units

Or google SI Units.

TopBanana

A kilolitre is a thousand litres.

CrisPDuk

Strange that they would use 6000kL rather than 6ML, one would think that if they're going to use SI units, they'd at least use them properly

JohnD

iTrader: (5)

In other words, one cubic metre which, if it were pure water, would have a mass of one tonne.
JohnD

TopBanana

Not really that strange. Kilometers are an SI unit, and you say 2000Km, not 2Mm

CrisPDuk

Actually TopBanana I'd say 2000km not Km, which would be something else entirely


Contrary to that though, one would say 2MJ not 2000kJ, or 2MV rather than 2000kV

James Neill

iTrader: (1)

They may treat a kL as their base unit (ie, they sell big volumes all the time). In much the same way as finance teams do budgetting in 000's of dollars. I find myself doing spreadsheets all the time with numbers like "1,000" - where this actually means 1,000,000 but you avoid writing all the 0's out as everything in the spreadsheet is in millions.

Anyway, that's my thinking.

mightyyid

Brilliant - so in this scenario, 6,000 kilo litres is actually 6,000,000 litres of oil?

Andy

TopBanana

Of course it bloody is

mightyyid

Topbanana

Thanks - long night, and just need to check. But once was enough I agree...

TA

Leslie

Could be mistaken for Cubic Centimetres perhap's.

Les

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

I used to audit stuff like that

I once found a spreadsheet that several people had worked on (nobody would admit who), one person worked in 1,000 meaning 1m (like you), the other chap read 1,000 as £1,000 as the column did not have that meaning defined.

By the end of their collaboration they were £235 million in the hole And I found that out at 9:15am on my first day What a week I had