I have seen dm for decimenter and dkm for dekameter. I have a ruler from
1980 that has prefixes. It specifies deka as dk. I hope theis helps.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
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
