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This honestly seems like the weirdest unit of measurement I've encountered.
I guess that if you don't generally follow a pattern of x-unit = 1000 y-unit then at each magnitude you just need to make up some completely new thing.
"This acre-feet thing is too small to measure the volume of water required for our hyperchad-datacentre. We need a new unit, like 1 hyperchad-datacentre of water."
I had never heard of it myself, but looking at the definition instantly reminded me of board feet for measuring lumber, but that makes sense as wood is a solid and has a fixed length, width, and height.
For water, especially water you would be moving, I'd think gallons to some per of ten. Moving up from gallons looks to get into barrels it pipes which are also very not-picturable units.
Looking up how ocean volunteers are displayed, cubic miles or cubic km, still seems unimaginable, as what else do we picture on that scale?
I have the Wembley Stadium unit as a spoof of the banana for scale, but even never having seen that in person, picturing a generic stadium of water feels more relatable than whatever acre-feet or cubic miles are.
I can kinda see how, if one were inventing a system of measurements, relatability might be important.
However, predictable units, magnitudes, and relations between scales like distance, volume, and weight is also important.
I guess the two attributes relatability and predictability could be seen to oppose each other?
I mean a "barrel of water" is easier to imagine than 100L of water, but only if barrels are an object you're familiar with.
However, the predictability of the metric system allows you to imagine a container with a volume of 100L even if no such container really exists.
I could visualize a commercial 55 gallon drum ok, but a barrel for volume measurements is 42 gallons. I'd never even heard of that before today.
Give me metric already. I've worked in pharma related fields for 20 years, all anyone cares about there is metric. I can visualize something I never actually seen like a deciliter easier than I can a "barrel."