Great Bill: The prefixes you list are not used solely with the SI metric. They are universal.
People are using them for many applications for shorthand purposes. The more people use them the more they will learn and understand. That's why we put them up front on the Montgomery County web site metric introductory page. Stan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Hooper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2004 3:35 PM Subject: [USMA:28702] Re: Decimal "Metric" time is already in use and the use is growing > Gavin wrote: > > Does the current SI > > system (or the old metric system) have a prefix for 1/100,000? > > No, it does not because none is needed. Steps of 1000 between one unit > and the next larger (or smaller) unit are sufficient. > > It is true that steps of ten are used between 1 and 1000 and between > 0.001 and 1 (namely; centi, deci, deka and hecto). These are vestiges > of the early metric system and have not been entirely eradicated from > the current SI. They are still officially acceptable and many people > feel they should be kept. (Others, like I, don't.) > > After the beginning, when a new unit was created for every multiple of > ten, it was quickly realized that such a scheme would lead to too many > units (ie, too many prefixes) and would therefore be difficult and > clumsy. In all newer parts of SI, there are only steps are 1000. As it > is there are 16 SI pefixes (including centi, deci, deka and hecto). Do > you know all 16? (I do!*) But I'm not sure I could (or would want to) > learn 48 prefixes that would be necessary if we wanted one for every > step of 10 up and down the scale. > > > Regards, > Bill Hooper > Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA > > deka 10 > hecto 100 > kilo 1000 (or 10^3) > mega 10^6 > giga 10^9 > terra 10^12 > peta 10^15 > exa 10^18 > zeta 10^21 > yotta 10^24 > > and > > deci 1/10 > centi 1/100 > milli 1/1000 (or 10^-3) > micro 10^-6 > nano 10^-9 > pico 10^-12 > femto 10^-15 > atto 10^-18 > zepto 10^-21 > yocto 10^-24 > > OK, so I'm showing off. I did these from memory, then checked. I found > only one error which I corrected above. I had omitted exa. > > Do you need the symbols? Most of them are just the first one letter of > each prefix, capitals for all those from mega on up, lower case for the > rest. The only exception is the two letter prefix "da" for deka. > >
