A metric prefix is a unit prefix that precedes a basic unit of measure to indicate a multiple or submultiple of the unit. All metric prefixes used today are decadic. Each prefix has a unique symbol that is prepended to any unit symbol. The prefix kilo- , for example, may be added to gram to indicate multiplication by one thousand: one kilogram is equal to one thousand grams. The prefix milli- , likewise, may be added to metre to indicate division by one thousand; one millimetre is equal to one thousandth of a metre.
Decimal multiplicative prefixes have been a feature of all forms of the metric system, with six of these dating back to the system's introduction in the 1790s. Metric prefixes have also been used with some non-metric units. The SI prefixes are metric prefixes that were standardised for use in the International System of Units (SI) by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in resolutions dating from 1960 to 2022. [1] [2] Since 2009, they have formed part of the ISO/IEC 80000 standard. They are also used in the Unified Code for Units of Measure (UCUM).
The BIPM specifies twenty-four prefixes for the International System of Units (SI).
Prefix | Base 10 | Decimal | Adoption [nb 1] | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Name | Symbol | |||
quetta | Q | 1030 | 1000000000000000000000000000000 | 2022 [3] |
ronna | R | 1027 | 1000000000000000000000000000 | |
yotta | Y | 1024 | 1000000000000000000000000 | 1991 |
zetta | Z | 1021 | 1000000000000000000000 | |
exa | E | 1018 | 1000000000000000000 | 1975 [4] |
peta | P | 1015 | 1000000000000000 | |
tera | T | 1012 | 1000000000000 | 1960 |
giga | G | 109 | 1000000000 | |
mega | M | 106 | 1000000 | 1873 |
kilo | k | 103 | 1000 | 1795 |
hecto | h | 102 | 100 | |
deca | da | 101 | 10 | |
— | — | 100 | 1 | — |
deci | d | 10−1 | 0.1 | 1795 |
centi | c | 10−2 | 0.01 | |
milli | m | 10−3 | 0.001 | |
micro | μ | 10−6 | 0.000001 | 1873 |
nano | n | 10−9 | 0.000000001 | 1960 |
pico | p | 10−12 | 0.000000000001 | |
femto | f | 10−15 | 0.000000000000001 | 1964 |
atto | a | 10−18 | 0.000000000000000001 | |
zepto | z | 10−21 | 0.000000000000000000001 | 1991 |
yocto | y | 10−24 | 0.000000000000000000000001 | |
ronto | r | 10−27 | 0.000000000000000000000000001 | 2022 [3] |
quecto | q | 10−30 | 0.000000000000000000000000000001 | |
|
The first uses of prefixes in SI date back to the definition of kilogram after the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century. Several more prefixes came into use, and were recognised by the 1947 IUPAC 14th International Conference of Chemistry [5] before being officially adopted for the first time in 1960. [6]
The most recent prefixes adopted were ronna-, quetta-, ronto-, and quecto- in 2022, after a proposal from British metrologist Richard J. C. Brown. The large prefixes ronna- and quetta- were adopted in anticipation of needs for use in data science, and because unofficial prefixes that did not meet SI requirements were already circulating. The small prefixes were also added, even without such a driver, in order to maintain symmetry. [7]
The prefixes from tera- to quetta- are based on the Ancient Greek or Ancient Latin numbers from 4 to 10, referring to the 4th through 10th powers of 103. The initial letter h has been removed from some of these stems and the initial letters z, y, r, and q have been added, ascending in reverse alphabetical order, to avoid confusion with other metric prefixes.
When mega and micro were adopted in 1873, there were then three prefixes starting with "m", so it was necessary to use some other symbol besides upper and lowercase 'm'. Eventually the Greek letter "μ" was adopted.
However, with the lack of a "μ" key on most typewriters, as well as computer keyboards, various other abbreviations remained common, including "mc", "mic", and "u".
From about 1960 onwards, "u" prevailed in type-written documents. [c] Because ASCII, EBCDIC, and other common encodings lacked code-points for "μ", this tradition remained even as computers replaced typewriters.
When ISO 8859-1 was created, it included the "μ" symbol for micro at codepoint 0xB5
; later, the whole of ISO 8859-1 was incorporated into the initial version of Unicode. Many fonts that support both characters render them identical, but because the micro sign and the Greek lower-case letter have different applications (normally, a Greek letter would be used with other Greek letters, but the micro sign is never used like that), some fonts render them differently, e.g. Linux Libertine and Segoe UI.[ citation needed ]
Most English-language keyboards do not have a "μ" key, so it is necessary to use a key-code; this varies depending on the operating system, physical keyboard layout, and user's language.
The LaTeX typesetting system features an SIunitx package in which the units of measurement are spelled out, for example, \qty{3}{\tera\hertz}
formats as "3 THz". [13]
The use of prefixes can be traced back to the introduction of the metric system in the 1790s, long before the 1960 introduction of the SI.[ citation needed ] The prefixes, including those introduced after 1960, are used with any metric unit, whether officially included in the SI or not (e.g., millidyne and milligauss). Metric prefixes may also be used with some non-metric units, but not, for example, with the non-SI units of time. [14]
The units kilogram, gram, milligram, microgram, and smaller are commonly used for measurement of mass. However, megagram, gigagram, and larger are rarely used; tonnes (and kilotonnes, megatonnes, etc.) or scientific notation are used instead. The megagram does not share the risk of confusion that the tonne has with other units with the name "ton".
The kilogram is the only coherent unit of the International System of Units that includes a metric prefix. [15] : 144
The litre (equal to a cubic decimetre), millilitre (equal to a cubic centimetre), microlitre, and smaller are common. In Europe, the centilitre is often used for liquids, and the decilitre is used less frequently. Bulk agricultural products, such as grain, beer and wine, often use the hectolitre (100 litres).[ citation needed ]
Larger volumes are usually denoted in kilolitres, megalitres or gigalitres, or else in cubic metres (1 cubic metre = 1 kilolitre) or cubic kilometres (1 cubic kilometre = 1 teralitre). For scientific purposes, the cubic metre is usually used.[ citation needed ]
The kilometre, metre, centimetre, millimetre, and smaller units are common. The decimetre is rarely used. The micrometre is often referred to by the older non-SI name micron , which is officially deprecated. In some fields, such as chemistry, the ångström (0.1 nm) has been used commonly instead of the nanometre. The femtometre, used mainly in particle physics, is sometimes called a fermi. For large scales, megametre, gigametre, and larger are rarely used. Instead, ad hoc non-metric units are used, such as the solar radius, astronomical units, light years, and parsecs; the astronomical unit is mentioned in the SI standards as an accepted non-SI unit.[ citation needed ]
Prefixes for the SI standard unit second are most commonly encountered for quantities less than one second. For larger quantities, the system of minutes (60 seconds), hours (60 minutes) and days (24 hours) is accepted for use with the SI and more commonly used. When speaking of spans of time, the length of the day is usually standardised to 86400 seconds so as not to create issues with the irregular leap second.[ citation needed ]
Larger multiples of the second such as kiloseconds and megaseconds are occasionally encountered in scientific contexts, but are seldom used in common parlance. For long-scale scientific work, particularly in astronomy, the Julian year or annum (a) is a standardised variant of the year, equal to exactly 31557600 seconds (365+ 1 /4 days). The unit is so named because it was the average length of a year in the Julian calendar. Long time periods are then expressed by using metric prefixes with the annum, such as megaannum (Ma) or gigaannum (Ga).[ citation needed ]
The SI unit of angle is the radian, but degrees, as well as arc-minutes and arc-seconds, see some scientific use.[ citation needed ]
Common practice does not typically use the flexibility allowed by official policy in the case of the degree Celsius (°C). NIST states: [16] "Prefix symbols may be used with the unit symbol °C and prefix names may be used with the unit name degree Celsius. For example, 12 m°C (12 millidegrees Celsius) is acceptable." In practice, it is more common for prefixes to be used with the kelvin when it is desirable to denote extremely large or small absolute temperatures or temperature differences. Thus, temperatures of star interiors may be given with the unit of MK (megakelvin), and molecular cooling may be given with the unit mK (millikelvin).[ citation needed ]
In use the joule and kilojoule are common, with larger multiples seen in limited contexts. In addition, the kilowatt-hour, a composite unit formed from the kilowatt and hour, is often used for electrical energy; other multiples can be formed by modifying the prefix of watt (e.g. terawatt-hour).[ citation needed ]
There exist a number of definitions for the non-SI unit, the calorie. There are gram calories and kilogram calories. One kilogram calorie, which equals one thousand gram calories, often appears capitalised and without a prefix (i.e. Cal) when referring to "dietary calories" in food. [17] It is common to apply metric prefixes to the gram calorie, but not to the kilogram calorie: thus, 1 kcal = 1000 cal = 1 Cal.
Metric prefixes are widely used outside the metric SI system. Common examples include the megabyte and the decibel. Metric prefixes rarely appear with imperial or US units except in some special cases (e.g., microinch, kilofoot, kilopound). They are also used with other specialised units used in particular fields (e.g., megaelectronvolt, gigaparsec, millibarn, kilodalton). In astronomy, geology, and palaeontology, the year, with symbol 'a' (from the Latin annus), is commonly used with metric prefixes: ka, Ma, and Ga. [18]
Official policies about the use of SI prefixes with non-SI units vary slightly between the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) and the American National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). For instance, the NIST advises that "to avoid confusion, prefix symbols (and prefix names) are not used with the time-related unit symbols (names) min (minute), h (hour), d (day); nor with the angle-related symbols (names) ° (degree), ′ (minute), and ″ (second)", [16] whereas the BIPM adds information about the use of prefixes with the symbol as for arcsecond when they state: "However astronomers use milliarcsecond, which they denote mas, and microarcsecond, μas, which they use as units for measuring very small angles." [19]
Some of the prefixes formerly used in the metric system have fallen into disuse and were not adopted into the SI. [20] [21] [22] The decimal prefix for ten thousand, myria- (sometimes spelt myrio- ), and the early binary prefixes [ broken anchor ]double- (2×) and demi- (1/2×) were parts of the original metric system adopted by France in 1795, [23] [d] but were not retained when the SI prefixes were internationally adopted by the 11th CGPM conference in 1960.
Other metric prefixes used historically include hebdo- (107) and micri- (10−14).
Double prefixes have been used in the past, such as micromillimetres or millimicrons (now nanometres), micromicrofarads (μμF; now picofarads, pF), kilomegatonnes (now gigatonnes), hectokilometres (now 100 kilometres) and the derived adjective hectokilometric (typically used for qualifying the fuel consumption measures). [24] These are not compatible with the SI.
Other obsolete double prefixes included "decimilli-" (10−4), which was contracted to "dimi-" [25] and standardised in France up to 1961.
There are no more letters of the Latin alphabet available for new prefixes (all the unused letters are already used for units). As such, Richard J.C. Brown (who proposed the prefixes adopted for 10±27 and 10±30) has proposed a reintroduction of compound prefixes (e.g. kiloquetta- for 1033) if a driver for prefixes at such scales ever materialises, with a restriction that the last prefix must always be quetta- or quecto-. This usage has not been approved by the BIPM. [26] [27]
In written English, the symbol K is often used informally to indicate a multiple of thousand in many contexts. For example, one may talk of a 40K salary (40000), or call the Year 2000 problem the Y2K problem. In these cases, an uppercase K is often used with an implied unit (although it could then be confused with the symbol for the kelvin temperature unit if the context is unclear). This informal postfix is read or spoken as "thousand", "grand", or just "k".
The financial and general news media mostly use m or M, b or B, and t or T as abbreviations for million, billion (109) and trillion (1012), respectively, for large quantities, typically currency [28] and population. [29]
The medical and automotive fields in the United States use the abbreviations cc or ccm for cubic centimetres. One cubic centimetre is equal to one millilitre.
For nearly a century, engineers used the abbreviation MCM to designate a "thousand circular mils" in specifying the cross-sectional area of large electrical cables. Since the mid-1990s, kcmil has been adopted as the official designation of a thousand circular mils, but the designation MCM still remains in wide use. A similar system is used in natural gas sales in the United States: m (or M) for thousands and mm (or MM) for millions of British thermal units or therms, and in the oil industry, [30] where MMbbl is the symbol for "millions of barrels". This usage of the capital letter M for "thousand" is from Roman numerals, in which M means 1000. [31]
Conversion of units is the conversion of the unit of measurement in which a quantity is expressed, typically through a multiplicative conversion factor that changes the unit without changing the quantity. This is also often loosely taken to include replacement of a quantity with a corresponding quantity that describes the same physical property.
The kilogram is the base unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI), having the unit symbol kg. 'Kilogram' means 'one thousand grams' and is colloquially abbreviated to kilo.
Kilo is a decimal unit prefix in the metric system denoting multiplication by one thousand (103). It is used in the International System of Units, where it has the symbol k, in lowercase.
The litre or liter is a metric unit of volume. It is equal to 1 cubic decimetre (dm3), 1000 cubic centimetres (cm3) or 0.001 cubic metres (m3). A cubic decimetre occupies a volume of 10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm and is thus equal to one-thousandth of a cubic metre.
Mega is a unit prefix in metric systems of units denoting a factor of one million (106 or 1000000). It has the unit symbol M. It was confirmed for use in the International System of Units (SI) in 1960. Mega comes from Ancient Greek: μέγας, romanized: mégas, lit. 'great'.
The micrometre or micrometer, also commonly known by the non-SI term micron, is a unit of length in the International System of Units (SI) equalling 1×10−6 metre ; that is, one millionth of a metre.
The International System of Units, internationally known by the abbreviation SI, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. Coordinated by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures it is the only system of measurement with official status in nearly every country in the world, employed in science, technology, industry, and everyday commerce.
SI derived units are units of measurement derived from the seven SI base units specified by the International System of Units (SI). They can be expressed as a product of one or more of the base units, possibly scaled by an appropriate power of exponentiation. Some are dimensionless, as when the units cancel out in ratios of like quantities. SI coherent derived units involve only a trivial proportionality factor, not requiring conversion factors.
The tonne is a unit of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton in the United States to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton and the long ton. It is equivalent to approximately 2,204.6 pounds, 1.102 short tons, and 0.984 long tons. The official SI unit is the megagram (Mg), a less common way to express the same amount.
The metric system is a decimal-based system of measurement. The current international standard for the metric system is the International System of Units, in which all units can be expressed in terms of seven base units: the metre (m), kilogram (kg), second (s), ampere (A), kelvin (K), mole (mol), and candela (cd). These can be made into larger or smaller units with the use of metric prefixes.
The pascal is the unit of pressure in the International System of Units (SI). It is also used to quantify internal pressure, stress, Young's modulus, and ultimate tensile strength. The unit, named after Blaise Pascal, is an SI coherent derived unit defined as one newton per square metre (N/m2). It is also equivalent to 10 barye in the CGS system. Common multiple units of the pascal are the hectopascal, which is equal to one millibar, and the kilopascal, which is equal to one centibar.
Deca-, sometimes deka-, is a common English-language numeral prefix derived from the Late Latin decas, from Ancient Greek δεκάς (dekás), from δέκα. It is used in many words.
Deci- is a decimal unit prefix in the metric system denoting a factor of one tenth. Proposed in 1793, and adopted in 1795, the prefix comes from the Latin decimus, meaning "tenth". Since 1960, the prefix is part of the International System of Units (SI).
A unit prefix is a specifier or mnemonic that is prepended to units of measurement to indicate multiples or fractions of the units. Units of various sizes are commonly formed by the use of such prefixes. The prefixes of the metric system, such as kilo and milli, represent multiplication by positive or negative powers of ten. In information technology it is common to use binary prefixes, which are based on powers of two. Historically, many prefixes have been used or proposed by various sources, but only a narrow set has been recognised by standards organisations.
France has a unique history of units of measurement due to its radical decision to invent and adopt the metric system after the French Revolution.
The grave, abbreviated gv, is the unit of mass used in the first metric system which was implemented in France in 1793. In 1795, the grave was renamed as the kilogram.
The cubic metre or cubic meter is the unit of volume in the International System of Units (SI). Its symbol is m3. It is the volume of a cube with edges one metre in length. An alternative name, which allowed a different usage with metric prefixes, was the stère, still sometimes used for dry measure. Another alternative name, no longer widely used, was the kilolitre.
The history of the metric system began during the Age of Enlightenment with measures of length and weight derived from nature, along with their decimal multiples and fractions. The system became the standard of France and Europe within half a century. Other measures with unity ratios were added, and the system went on to be adopted across the world.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the metric system:
Décision de tracer le mètre, unité fondamentale, sur une règle de platine. Nomenclature des « mesures républicaines ». Reprise de la triangulation[The Law of 18 Germinal [month], Year 3: Decision to draw the fundamental unit metre on a platinum ruler. Nomenclature of "republican measures". Resumption of the triangulation]