[USMA:36330] Re: Symbol for deka/deca

[CredoinIesum]

In a message dated 2006-03-19 18:54:17 Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: What in the world possessed the SI committee (CGPM) to change this? D was far more consistent with the rest of the symbols for prefixes than da -- prefixes >1 are mostly capital letters, da is the ONLY prefix symbol that is not one letter. Surely there was some justification for this . . . anyone know what it was? Jim My biggest guess would be because in reality D and d where probably used interchangeably.  In the hospital I work I see many things that say ML instead of mL...It's obvious in the instances I see ML used that it means 0.001 L instead of 1000 L but with dL and DL it might not always be so obvious.   Fortunately the same hospital is trying to forbid the use of 'cc' and force the use of mL instead.  Unfortunately they also want to ban ug and enforce mcg instead.   I actually pointed out to a pharmacist that I cannot possibly administer a dose of 'one mega litre' and the dropper that says '1 ML' on the side cannot possibly contain '1 ML'.  The pharmacist looked at me like I was crazy and truly didn't understand the difference in 1 ML and 1 mL.   Richard