Re: Human perception of infrared

[aaronf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Aaron Ferrucci)]

bazpan@xxxxxxx wrote:
> ...
> Very embarassed about being too lazy to check that the 'nano-' prefix 
means
> billionth rather than millionth. (A UK billion being one thousand million,
> not sure about US).
> ...

Actually, in the US, as in France, a billion is one thousand million,
wherease in the UK it's a million million... a similar difference of opinion
exists for trillions, quadrillions, etc.  Here's a table showing the 
disagreement:

number           UK      US
- ------           ---     ---
million          10^6    10^6
billion          10^12   10^9
trillion         10^18   10^12
quadrillion      10^24   10^15
...

Given this ridiculous difference of terms, it's easiest and
safest to work with the metric prefixes or exponential notation:

prefix   value
- ------   -----
micro    10^-6
nano     10^-9
pico     10^-12
femto    10^-15
...

At least we can all agree on those!
- -Aaron


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