[extropy-chat] a nano question

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 05:19:45PM -0400, pjmanney wrote:
> I have found a repeated discrepancy.  Is a nanometer a millionth or a billionth of a meter?  The US gov't papers all say a millionth (like the recent "The Future is Coming Sooner Than You Think" and its earlier gov't source material), but I have read a billionth in other places.

It's 10^-9, so it's a billionth. A millionth would be a mere micrometer.

Here's more prefixes than you can shake a stick at:
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci499008,00.html

(I wish they'd stuck with power of two, though: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci825099,00.html )

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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