metric prefixes and scientific notation

The least ambiguous approach is to simply write them out in words, such as “$ thousands.” This is CFI’s recommended method, to avoid any potential confusion. When mega and micro were adopted in 1873, there were then three prefixes starting with “m”, so it was necessary to use some other symbol besides upper and lowercase ‘m’. Rather than use the barred M, however, accounting went with MM as an abbreviation for a million. For example, 1MM equals 1 million, $34MM equals $34 million and so on.

• From about 1960 onwards, “u” prevailed in type-written documents.[b] Because ASCII, EBCDIC, and other common encodings lacked code-points for “μ”, this tradition remained even as computers replaced typewriters.
• For example, 1 Kilobyte is often used to mean 1000 bytes (base 10), or it can be used to represent 1024 bytes (base 2), resulting in misunderstandings.
• In case you are wondering how to measure length in millimeters or how a length of a millimeter or 1 mm looks like, let’s check it out on a ruler.
• The example below shows how figures can be portrayed in millions.
• Either method—one step at a time or all the steps together—is acceptable.

Physical SI Units

• Our last figure from the prior example, “0.267 m”, would be expressed in the new notation as “0m267”.
• Convert a number to and from scientific notation, e notation, engineering notation, standard form, and real numbers.
• In normalized notation, the exponent is chosen so that the absolute value (modulus) of the significand m is at least 1 but less than 10.
• This informal postfix is read or spoken as “thousand”, “grand”, or just “k”.
• While these prefixes cover a rang of 10-3 to 103, many electronic values can have a much larger range.

Give the abbreviation for each unit and define the abbreviation in terms of the base unit. These are what we’ll consider the standard six prefixes taught in most High School science courses. You may have even learned a fun mnemonic to go along with these such as Kangaroos Have Dirty Underwear During Cold Months. However, as you’ll soon see, when learning about electronics and computer science, the range of prefixes well exceeds the standard six. While these prefixes cover a rang of 10-3 to 103, many electronic values can have a much larger range. Frequently, in finance and accounting settings now, an analyst will use k to denote thousands and a capitalized M to denote millions.

Metric Prefixes and SI Units

While Roman numerals are technically additive (MM is really 1,000 plus 1,000 or 2,000), MM is still a fairly common way of abbreviating millions, especially in certain industries like oil and gas. This guide will explore how the notation should be used, as well as alternative symbols that are used in practice. The medical and automotive fields in the United States use the abbreviations cc or ccm for cubic centimetres. In written English, the symbol K is often used informally to indicate a multiple of thousand in many contexts.

Scientific Notation Converter

When exploring the world of electronics, these units of measurement are very important and allow people from all over the world to communicate and share their work and discoveries. Some common units used in electronics include voltage for electrical potential difference, ampere for electrical current, watts for power, farad for capacitance, henry’s for inductance, and ohms for resistance. When preparing financial statements, accountants will typically write a note at the top of the income statement or the balance sheet saying, “All figures are expressed in millions of U.S. dollars,” for example. The Roman numerals MM are frequently used to designate that the units used in presenting information (financial and non-financial) are in millions. The example below shows how figures can be portrayed in millions. “Millimeter” is a unit of length that equals one-thousandth of a meter.

We don’t know for sure why the Romans used letters or why they chose the letters they did. One theory says the use of M was because Romans measured a mile as a thousand paces. Another theory is that it is a misprinting of the Greek letter phi.

The average length of a red ant is 5 mm. Express it in meters.

Since decimal points (”.”) are easily misread and/or “lost” due to poor print quality, quantities such as 4.7 k may be mistaken for 47 k. The new notation replaces the decimal point with the metric prefix character, so that “4.7 k” is printed instead as “4k7”. Our last figure from the prior example, “0.267 m”, would be expressed in the new notation as “0m267”. mm notation Sometimes you will have to perform more than one conversion to obtain the desired unit. For example, suppose you want to convert 54.7 km into millimeters. Scientific notation is a way of expressing numbers that are too large or too small to be conveniently written in decimal form, since to do so would require writing out an inconveniently long string of digits.

• Instead of saying 3,200,000,000 Hertz, you can say 3.2 GigaHertz, or 3.2 GHz for shorthand written notation.
• I have worked in equity markets for 20 years and poor abbreviations drive me crazy.
• If net income runs to $6,500,000, it goes on the books as $6.5MM.
• However, as you’ll soon see, when learning about electronics and computer science, the range of prefixes well exceeds the standard six.

Obsolete metric prefixes

For example, the Roman numeral MM is frequently used to designate that the units used in presenting information (financial and non-financial) in millions. The Roman numeral M is used to indicate units in thousands. For example, an annual salary of $60,000 might appear as $60k instead of $60M. This is closely related to the base-2 floating-point representation commonly used in computer arithmetic, and the usage of IEC binary prefixes (e.g. 1B10 for 1×210 (kibi), 1B20 for 1×220 (mebi), 1B30 for 1×230 (gibi), 1B40 for 1×240 (tebi)).

Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering I

Further examples of scientific notation