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Conversion of units is the conversion of the unit of measurement in which a quantity is expressed, typically through a multiplicative conversion factor that changes the unit without changing the quantity. This is also often loosely taken to include replacement of a quantity with a corresponding quantity that describes the same physical property.
We can convert a mass expressed in kilograms to the equivalent mass expressed in metres by multiplying by the conversion factor G/c 2. For example, the Sun's mass of 2.0 × 10 30 kg in SI units is equivalent to 1.5 km. This is half the Schwarzschild radius of a one solar mass black hole. All other conversion factors can be worked out by ...
In physics, natural unit systems are measurement systems for which selected physical constants have been set to 1 through nondimensionalization of physical units.For example, the speed of light c may be set to 1, and it may then be omitted, equating mass and energy directly E = m rather than using c as a conversion factor in the typical mass–energy equivalence equation E = mc 2.
The conversion between different SI units for one and the same physical quantity is always through a power of ten. This is why the SI (and metric systems more generally) are called decimal systems of measurement units. [10] The grouping formed by a prefix symbol attached to a unit symbol (e.g. ' km ', ' cm ') constitutes a new inseparable unit ...
The Planck length is a distance scale of interest in speculations about quantum gravity. The Bekenstein–Hawking entropy of a black hole is one-fourth the area of its event horizon in units of Planck length squared.
A number of different units (some only of historical interest) are shown and expressed in terms of the corresponding SI unit. Conversions between units in the metric system are defined by their prefixes (for example, 1 kilogram = 1000 grams, 1 milligram = 0.001 grams) and are thus not listed in this article.
Units for volume, however, can be factored into the base units of length (m 3), thus they are considered derived or compound units. Sometimes the names of units obscure the fact that they are derived units. For example, a newton (N) is a unit of force, which may be expressed as the product of mass (with unit kg) and acceleration (with unit m⋅ ...
A base unit is a unit adopted for expressing a base quantity. A derived unit is used for expressing any other quantity, and is a product of powers of base units. For example, in the modern metric system, length has the unit metre and time has the unit second, and speed has the derived unit metre per second.