Metric System Review

Metric System

Powers of Ten

• The metric system uses powers of ten for scaling units.

• Table 1.1 lists metric system prefixes and their corresponding powers of ten, symbols, and meanings.

  Exponent	Prefix	Symbol	Meaning
  10^9	giga	G	billion
  10^6	mega	M	million
  10^3	kilo	k	thousand
  10^2	hecto	h	hundred
  10^1	deca	da	ten
  10^{-1}	deci	d	tenth
  10^{-2}	centi	C	hundredth
  10^{-3}	milli	m	thousandth
  10^{-6}	micro	μ	millionth
  10^{-9}	nano	n	billionth

Complementary Metric Units

• Certain metric prefixes often appear together in pairs.

• Table 1.2 lists these complementary metric units.

• For instance, frequency is often measured in megahertz (millions of cycles per second), while period is measured in microseconds (millionths of seconds).

  Pairs	Prefixes	Abbreviations
  billions and billionths	giga & nano	G & n
  millions and millionths	mega & micro	M & μ
  thousands and thousandths	kilo & milli	k & m
  hundreds and hundredths	hecto & centi	h & c
  tens and tenths	deca & deci	da & d