Units, Quantities and Measurements

Homogenous Equations
Homogenous Equations
Look at this equation:
3kg + 6 kg = 9m The numbers are correct but the units make it nonsense. For an equation to make sense, the units on one side must be the same as on the other. The equation must be homogenous. Some examples are not quite so easy. Look at this equation: 6kg x 3 ms-2 = 18N This equation is actually correct (It's an example of Newton's Second Law). F = m.a What it shows is that newtons are equivalent to kg.ms-2. In fact, that is how you work out derived units. Think of an equation for the units that you want and put in the base units. Let's look at an example. Find the base units for joules. An equation for joules (energy) is work = force x distance. Put the units in the right hand side. Force x distance is equivalent to newtons x metres. But newtons x metres is equivalent to kg.ms-2 x m (see above for where I got the base units for newtons.) Simplified that becomes kg.m2s-2. That's the units for the right hand side of the equation. And because the equation is homogenous, that must be the units of the left hand side too. So joules are equivalent to kg.m2s-2.

Units, Quantities and Measurements

Units and Prefixes
Base units
All units in science are derived from seven base units: Mass Distance Time Current Amount kilogram kg metre m second s ampere A mole mol K

Temperature Kelvin

Light Intensity candela cd

Derived units
There are many other units that we use, but all of these are derived by multiplication or division of some combinations of the base units. You can think of it like letters and words. We have 26 letters in the alphabet but we have thousands of words in our language. Here are some of the derived units: Quantity Velocity Acceleration Force Power Pressure Frequency Charge Unit metre per second Newton watt Pascal hertz coulomb SymbolBase unit equivalent ms-1 N J W Pa Hz C ms-1 ms-2 kg ms-2 kg m2s-2 kg m2s-3 kg m-1s-2 s-1 As

metre per second squared ms-2

Work or Energy joule

Prefixes
Now you have units, you often need to group these into larger or smaller numbers to make them more manageable. For example, you don't say that you are going to see someone who lives 100,000 m away from you, you say they live 100 km away from you. Here a quick list of the common quantities used: NameSymbolScaling factor tera giga kilo deci T G k d
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Common example Computer memories are measured in gigabytes. A power station may have an output of 600 MW (megawatts). Mass is often measured in kilogrammes (i.e. 1000 grammes). Fluids are sometimes measured in decilitres (i.e. 0.1 litre). Distances are measured in centimetres (i.e. 100th of a metre).

10 1,000,000,000,000 Large computer hardrives can be terabytes in size. 109 1,000,000,000 106 1,000,000 10 1,000 10 0.1 10 0.01
-2 -1 3

mega M

centi c

Units, Quantities and Measurements

milli m 10-3 0.001 10-6 1,000,000th 10-9 10
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Time is sometimes measured in milliseconds. micrometres are often used to measure wavelengths of electromagnetic waves. nanometres are used to measure atomic spacing. picometres used to measure atomic radii.

micro nano n pico p