on 3/19/2002 11:25 AM, M R at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Anyone has an idea of the origins of the words like > mega, giga, micro, nano, etc. > > I dont think the Romans used these terms
They're not all Roman; some are Greek (like micro) and more recently other languages have been used, too. (I think femto comes from the Danish language.) The were not words, necessarily, but were word stems in many cases. The prefix giga comes from the same root as the words giant and gigantic. It simply means very big. Some, like centi, came from words or roots that actuall meant a numerical value (although centi meant 100, not 1/100), but they quickly ran out of purely numerical prefixes when they extended SI to include prefixes for much larger and smaller sizes, eventually up to 10^24 and down to 10^-24. Regards, Bill Hooper retired physics professor Florida, USA -------------------------------------- "Simplification" begins with "SI" --------------------------------------
