PREFIXES ,ITS IMPORTANCE AND EXAMPLES

 PREFIXES

• Some of the quantities are either very large or very small. For example, 250 000 m, 0.002 W and 0.000 002 g. etc. 
• SI units have the advantage that their multiples and sub-multiples can be expressed in terms of prefixes. 
• Prefixes are the words or letters added before SI units such as kilo, mega, giga and milli

• IMPORTANCE

• The prefixes are useful to express very large or small quantities. For example, divide 20,000 g by 1000 to express it into kilogramme, since kilo represents

EXAMPLES

p	pico	10-12	7 pF = 7 × 10-12 F = 0.000 000 000 007 farads
n	nano	10-9	5 nm = 5 × 10-9 m = 0.000 000 005 meters
μ	micro	10-6	6 μm = 6 × 10-6 m = 0.000 006 meters
m	milli	10-3	5 mm = 5 × 10-3 m = 0.005 meters