Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
A metric prefix is a unit prefix that precedes a basic unit of measure to indicate a multiple or submultiple of the unit. All metric prefixes used today are decadic.Each prefix has a unique symbol that is prepended to any unit symbol.
Nano (symbol n) is a unit prefix meaning one billionth. Used primarily with the metric system , this prefix denotes a factor of 10 −9 or 0.000 000 001 . It is frequently encountered in science and electronics for prefixing units of time and length .
The smallest meaningful increment of time is the Planck time―the time light takes to traverse the Planck distance, many decimal orders of magnitude smaller than a second. [ 1 ] The largest realized amount of time, based on known scientific data, is the age of the universe , about 13.8 billion years—the time since the Big Bang as measured in ...
Planck length; typical scale of hypothetical loop quantum gravity or size of a hypothetical string and of branes; according to string theory, lengths smaller than this do not make any physical sense. [1] Quantum foam is thought to exist at this scale. 10 −24: 1 yoctometer 142 ym Effective cross section radius of 1 MeV neutrinos [2] 10 −21
Unit prefixes that are much larger or smaller than encountered in practice are seldom used, albeit valid combinations. In most contexts only a few, the most common, combinations are established. For example, prefixes for multiples greater than one thousand are rarely applied to the gram or metre.
However, the names of all SI mass units are based on gram, rather than on kilogram; thus 10 3 kg is a megagram (10 6 g), not a *kilokilogram. The tonne (t) is an SI-compatible unit of mass equal to a megagram (Mg), or 10 3 kg. The unit is in common use for masses above about 10 3 kg and is often used with SI prefixes.
Microparticles have a much larger surface-to-volume ratio than at the macroscale, and thus their behavior can be quite different. For example, metal microparticles can be explosive in air. Microspheres are spherical microparticles, [ 4 ] and are used where consistent and predictable particle surface area is important.
Nanocomputer refers to a computer smaller than the microcomputer, which is smaller than the minicomputer. Microelectronic components that are at the core of all modern electronic devices employ semiconductor transistors. The term nanocomputer is increasingly used to refer to general computing devices of size comparable to a credit card.