Ångstroms and fermis are pre-SI units for measuring real small things like
molecular bonds, wavelengths and even smaller stuff. A fermi is equal to a
femtometer. An Ångstrom is 0.1 nanometers. A light year is about 9.5
trillion km or 9.5 petameters. Coincidentally femto- is 10e-15 and peta- is
10e15.
SC
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Norman Werling
> Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2001 4:05 PM
> To: U.S. Metric Association
> Subject: [USMA:12716] Re: From 1 yottameter to 1 femtometer
>
>
> Scott & all,
>
> As I have often admitted, my interest in SI-metric is because measuring
> would be so much easier for everyone in all areas of life.
>
> My modem is pretty good because on automatic this zipped along quite
> quickly. Then I put it on manual and jotted down the light
> years, microns,
> angstroms and fermis on a copy of Jim Frysinger's Prefix Compendium.
>
> It appears that they used the word 'micron' for a micrometer
> (µm) or 10 to the -6 power. Then 'angstroms' filled in at 10 to
> the -7, -8,
> and -10 powers. Then fremis filled in at 10 to the -13 and -14
> powers. Thus
> one fremi is the same as one femtometer at 10 to the -15 power.
>
> On the other end of the scale, light years were shown from 10 to the 16th
> power all the way to 10 to the 23rd power. Obviously they didn't
> use 'exa',
> 'zetta', or 'yotta'.
>
> Did they use SI with terms that I don't know to be SI? Or are they mixing
> some of the earlier metric systems into this.
>
> I know there have been threads before which discussed 'light years' and
> 'angstroms', but I don't recall 'fermis'. I hope that I am not suggesting
> too technical a thread with this question, although perhaps I would
> understand some of it this time around.
>
> Norm
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Scott Clauss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: 2001May08 16:03
> Subject: [USMA:12710] From 1 yottameter to 1 femtometer
>
>
> > This is sort of fun.
> >
> > Try this website to see the orders of magnitude fly by:
> >
> >
> http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/
index.html
>
> This may bog down with slower modems.
>
> They notate in SI mostly, but also use light years, microns, angstroms,
and
> fermis.
>
