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Extremely small metric unit prefices to yocto

Extremely small metric unit prefices including micro, nano, pico, femto, atto, zepto, yocto

This skill teaches the extremely small metric prefixes from micro to yocto. Each prefix denotes a unit 1000 times smaller than the one before it, uses a specific symbolic letter, and helps in measuring various quantities by representing multiples of ten to the negative powers.

Learn extremely small metric unit prefices to yocto

Teaching Transcript

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Let's learn the extremely small metric prefices for micro, nano, pico, femto, atto, zepto, and yocto. This is an extremely small set, where each prefix is 1000 times smaller than the next larger one.

Each prefix has a letter that is always used to represent it. For the smaller units, a lower case letter is always used. For example, lower case 'p' is pico, but an upper case 'P' would be peta, which is extremely large. Also note that for micro, a greek letter Mu that looks like a 'u' with a tail is used.

We add the prefix to the thing being measured, like bytes for storage, meters for length or hertz for frequency. So 1 Megabyte is written with a capital 'M' paired with a capital 'B', and is one million bytes

A simple way to think about these prefices is that they represent multiples of 10 to the 3. Each unit has a power of ten that is three smaller than the next larger one. You can see that scientific notation will come in handy for working with extremely small units.

A good mneumonic to use for extremely small units is 'make no peace for a zillion years'

Skill Practice

Extremely small metric unit prefices including micro, nano, pico, femto, atto, zepto, yocto

Test your understanding of extremely small metric unit prefices to yocto by practicing it! Work through the below exercises to use it in practice.