Friday, August 3, 2012

Scientific Notation, Engineering Notation, Metric Prefixes

What is the difference between Scientific Notation and Engineering Notation for expressing numbers ?
Both of them are the common forms of powers of 10 notation.


Scientific notation is expressing any number in the form of power of 10.
For eg. 1) 3510 can be written in the scientific notation as 3.5X103
            2) 0.000000819 can be written in the scientific notation as 8.19X10-7
Positive powers of 10 are used to indicate the numbers greater than 1 and negative powers are used to indicate the numbers less than 1.


Engineering Notation is similar to scientific notation except that in Engineering notation, the powers of 10 are always multiples of 3 such as 103, 106, 109, 10-610-9, 10-12 etc. 


Metric Prefixes : Metric Prefix is the name given to the powers of 10 used in Engineering Notation. In Electronics, these metric prefixes are used more commonly to express the values of current, resistance, voltage, power etc.


The SI prefixes are listed below

Prefix
Symbol
Factor
Value
yotta
Y
1024
1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
zetta
Z
1021
1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
exa
E
1018
1 000 000 000 000 000 000
peta
P
1015
1 000 000 000 000 000
tera
T
1012
1 000 000 000 000
giga
G
109
1 000 000 000
mega
M
106
1 000 000 
kilo
k
103
1 000 
hecto
h
102
100
deka
da
101
10
deci
d
10-1
0.1
centi
c
10-2
0.01
milli
m
10-3
0.001
micro
ยต
10-6
  0.000 001
nano
n
10-9
0.000 000 001
pico
p
10-12
0.000 000 000 001
femto
f
10-15
0.000 000 000 000 001
atto
a
10-18
0.000 000 000 000 000 001
zepto
z
10-21
0.000 000 000 000 000 000 001
yocto
y
10-24
0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 001




No comments:

Post a Comment