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Subject: 
Mini, Micro, Maxi, Macro, Kilo, etc. (was: Re: Pink spaceship)
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.space, lugnet.off-topic.geek
Followup-To: 
lugnet.off-topic.geek
Date: 
Sun, 17 Oct 1999 23:06:39 GMT
Viewed: 
875 times
  
In lugnet.space, "Mike Poindexter" <lego@poindexter.cc> writes:
Mini is 1/1,000 and micro is 1/1,000,000.

Yes, Micro- is 10^-6, but Mini- is not necessarily 10^-3.  Mini- is any size
less than 1.

Milli- is 10^-3.


Macro is 1,000 isn't it?

Macro is any size greater than 1 or greater than usual.  It *can* be 10^3,
but it isn't necessarily 10^3.  Macroeconomics, for example, isn't about
economics on the 1000x scale, nor is a macro-zoom lens a 1000x lens.

Kilo- is what equals 10^3...unless you're talking about Kilobytes, in which
case it means 2^10 instead of 10^3...unless you buy into this new "KKB"
nonsense kicking around[1], in which case a Kilobyte has been redefined to
10^3 bytes and a "Kibibyte" is now what a "Kilobyte" used to be, namely 2^10
bytes.  :-p


[...]
Macrofig would then be better to describe large scale buildings.  As the old
people and/or technic figs have been refered to as megafigs,

I've never heard the old LEGO people referred to as "megafigs," but I have
heard them referred to as "maxifigs."  Where did you hear/see "megafig"?
Mega- is 10^6, so a "megafig" would be a 1000000x fig.


what would be macrofig?

That reminds me of an old Marvel comic book called The Micronauts, in which
there was a Microverse and a Macroverse.  (We humans existed in the
Macroverse, IIRC.)

Anyway, while it's clear that "minifig" came about directly from TLG's name
Mini-Figure™, it's not clear how "maxifig" came about as a juxtoposition
from "minifig" (that is, as opposed to "macrofig").  It's possible that the
pre-existing feminine product terms "minipad" and "maxipad" may have had
some sort of influence.  (This is just speculation.)  AFAIK, there's no such
thing as a "macropad."

--Todd

[1] http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html


[followups to lugnet.off-topic.geek]



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Pink spaceship
 
(...) Mini is 1/1,000 and micro is 1/1,000,000. Macro is 1,000 isn't it? This would put macrofig at larger than minifig. Typically, microfig is anything smaller than minifig scale. Nanofig is "smaller than that," which is very ambiguous, since (...) (25 years ago, 17-Oct-99, to lugnet.space)

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