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Metric units are units based on the metre, gram or second and decimal (power of ten) multiples or sub-multiples of these. According to Schadow and McDonald, [ 1 ] metric units, in general, are those units "defined 'in the spirit' of the metric system, that emerged in late 18th century France and was rapidly adopted by scientists and engineers.
The International System of Units, internationally known by the abbreviation SI (from French Système international d'unités), is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement.
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.
Metric prefixes have also been used with some non-metric units. The SI prefixes are metric prefixes that were standardised for use in the International System of Units (SI) by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in resolutions dating from 1960 to 2022. [1] [2] Since 2009, they have formed part of the ISO/IEC 80000 standard.
Countries using the metric (), imperial, and US customary systems as of 2019. United States customary units form a system of measurement units commonly used in the United States and most U.S. territories [1] since being standardized and adopted in 1832. [2]
The nanometre (SI symbol: nm) is a unit of length in the metric system equal to 10 −9 metres ( 1 / 1 000 000 000 m = 0. 000 000 001 m). To help compare different orders of magnitude , this section lists lengths between 10 −9 and 10 −8 m (1 nm and 10 nm).
The basic unit of length in the imperial and U.S. customary systems is the yard, defined as exactly 0.9144 m by international treaty in 1959. [2] [10] Common imperial units and U.S. customary units of length include: [11] thou or mil (1 ⁄ 1000 of an inch) inch (25.4 mm) foot (12 inches, 0.3048 m) yard (3 feet, 0.9144 m)
The table usually lists only one name and symbol that is most commonly used. The final column lists some special properties that some of the quantities have, such as their scaling behavior (i.e. whether the quantity is intensive or extensive ), their transformation properties (i.e. whether the quantity is a scalar , vector , matrix or tensor ...