Actually, that quote in Arial is Kilopascal, not me.
Carleton From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bill Hooper Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 19:59 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:51171] Fwd: 10^12 vs 10^18 RE: Re: A trillion dollars, give or take Carleton wrote: A billion is not correctly 1 x 10^9, it is 1 x 10^12. A trillion is not 1 x 10^12, it is 1 x 10^18. The prefix tells you how many zeros are to follow. The prefix tri in trillion tells you that a take the number of zeros in a million (6) and multiply them by 3 to get 18. ... Thus you have million (10^6), milliard (10^9), billion (10^12), billiard (10^15), trillion (10^18), trilliard (10^21), quadrillion (10^24), quadriliard (10^27), etc. Yes, this is a bad situation, but the British usage and American usage are BOTH correct, each in its own domain*. They just are inconsistent with one another. However, the way to "resolve" the issue is not to argue over billions, trillions, milliards etc.; it is to USE SI PREFIXES and not use such words as "trillion" (which had two different meanings) and poorly understood words like "milliard". If something is 10^9 of some unit (say metres), then just call it one gigametre (1 Gm), and avoid the problem of whether it is "one billion metres" (American usage) or "one thousand million metres" (British usage) , or "one millard metres". (Does anyone really use the term milliard?) Let's stick to promoting SI metric and not try to change the English language (either version, American English or British English). It's a losing battle and will make more difficult the battle to adopt SI. Bill Hooper 71 kg body mass Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA * I really don't know what parts of the world use the British meanings of trillion, etc. and which use the American meanings. Is there any general pattern, or is it a hodge podge.
