Almost all of the SI unit magnitude prefixes are derived from Greek words -- e.g., "mega", meaning 10^6, is derived from the Greek word for "large"; "micro", meaning 10^-6, is derived from the Greek word meaning "small"; "kilo", meaning 10^3, is derived from the Greek word for "one thousand" ...
But "milli", on the other hand, meaning 10^-3, is derived from the Latin "mille", also meaning "one thousand". Milli appears to be the only commonly used magnitude prefix derived from Latin rather than Greek. (There are some obscure outliers... the prefix "femto" (10^-15) is actually derived from the Old Norse word for "fifteen". But most are from Greek.) Why is "micro" (10^-6) abbreviated by the Greek letter mu (ยต)? Obviously "m" was taken already by milli, so mu, the Greek equivalent letter of the Roman "m", was chosen. :-) (You can find out all kinds of useful and interesting things in a common English dictionary!) Bill W5WVO ----- Original Message ----- From: "Julian, G4ILO" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 10:40 AM Subject: Re: [K3] [Elecraft] Units > > > Dave Yarnes wrote: > > > > But I still have no idea how they ever got > > started using "M" that way. It sure didn't make any sense to me. > > > M = 1000 in Roman numerals. Perhaps that's it? > > ----- > Julian, G4ILO. K2 #392 K3 #222. > http://www.g4ilo.com/ G4ILO's Shack http://www.ham-directory.com/ Ham > Directory http://www.g4ilo.com/kcomm.html KComm for Elecraft K2 and K3 > -- > View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Poor-man%27s-beverage-and-diversity-tp1623198p1630010.html > Sent from the [K3] mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > _______________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Post to: [email protected] > You must be a subscriber to post to the list. > Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): > http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm > Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com > _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
