SI units are used for consistency.

Suppose that one of your classmates estimates that she

drinks three gallons of water in a week. Another classmate
Figure 5 SI Base Units thinks that he drinks about 350 ounces of water in a week.
Quantity Unit Abbreviation Who drinks more water? When all scientists use the same
Length meter m system of measurement, sharing data and results is easier. SI is
Mass kilogram kg
based on the metric system and uses the seven SI base units
that are listed in Figure 5.
Time second s
You may have noticed that the base units do not include
Temperature kelvin K area, volume, pressure, weight, force, speed, and other famil-
Electric current ampere A iar quantities. Combinations of the base units are called
Amount of
mole mol
derived units and are used for these measurements.
substance
For example, suppose that you want to order carpet for a
Luminous
intensity
candela cd floor that measures 8.0 m long and 6.0 m wide. You know that
the area of a rectangle is its length times its width.
A=lw

The area of the floor can be calculated as shown below.

A = 8.0 m 6.0 m = 48 m2 (or 48 square meters)

The SI unit of area, m2, is a derived unit.

SI prefixes are used for very large and very small

measurements.
Figure 6 Prexes for Large Measurements Look at a meterstick. How would you express the
Multiple of length of a birds egg or the distance you traveled on
Prefix Symbol Meaning base unit a trip in meters? The birds egg might be 5/100 m, or
kilo- k thousand 1,000 0.05 m, long. The distance of your trip could have
mega- M million 1,000,000 been 800,000 m. To avoid writing a lot of decimal
places and zeros, you can use SI prefixes to express
giga- G billion 1,000,000,000
very small or very large numbers. These prefixes are
all multiples of 10, as Figure 6 and Figure 7 show.
If you use the prefixes, you can say that the birds
Figure 7 Prexes for Small Measurements
egg is 5 cm (1 centimeter equals 0.01 m) long and
Multiple of
Prefix Symbol Meaning base unit
your trip was 800 km (1 kilometer equals 1,000 m)
long. Note that the base unit of mass is the kilogram,
deci- d tenth 0.1
which is a multiple of the gram.
centi- c hundredth 0.01
It is easy to convert SI units to smaller or larger
milli- m thousandth 0.001 units. Remember that for the same measurement,
micro- millionth 0.000001 you need to use more of a small unit or less of a large
nano- n billionth 0.000000001 unit. For example, if a persons height is 1.75 m, the
same height in centimeters would be 175 cm, a larger
number. But 1.75 m and 175 cm express the same
quantity.
Why are SI prefixes used?

18 Chapter 1 Introduction to Science