Why do scientist use light years instead to measure space instead of kilometers?

The reason scientists use light years instead of kilometres is becasue a light year is the distance traveled by light in one year, and if we actually did the math (ill just give it to you) to put that into perspective a kilometer is 1000 meters or . if they mesured everything in kilometers they would have to use even bigger numbers than they already do.

    m₁v₁ + m₂v₂ = (m₁ + m₂)vmomentum is conserved.the left-hand side of the equation represents the momentum in the system before the collision.the right-hand side represents the momentum in the system after the collisionm₁ and v₁ represents the mass and the velocity of the physics blockm₂ and v₂ represents the mass and velocity of the ball of puttyv represents the final velocity of the combined mass.the question states the two masses stick together. they combined mass has its own velocity with the body mass the sum of the two objects' massestheir combined momentum is (m₁ + m₂)vto find the magitude of (m₁ + m₂)v, we need to add the vectors on the left-hand side of the equation: m₁v₁ + m₂v₂.note the diagram. i have positioned the vectors in accordance with their directions.the magnitude of the resultant can be calculated using the pythagorean theorem since this is a right triangle situation (north and west are perpendicular)|(m₁ + m₂)v| =  √[ (m₁v₁)² + (m₂v₂)² ]|(m₁ + m₂)v| =  √[ (1.5kg·8.0m/s)² + (0.40kg·20m/s)² ]|(m₁ + m₂)v| =  14.4 kg m/sfor two significant figures (assuming that 20m/s is two), this rounds to 14 kg m/s