Metric System

Metric has only seven fundamental units:

•mass (kilogram, kg)
•length (meter, m)
•time (second, s)
•temperature (Kelvin, K)
•chemical amount (mole, mol)
•electrical current (Ampere, A)
•luminosity (candela, cd)

All other metric units are just combinations of these seven units, and in General Chemistry we only need to use the first five. This is the elegance and simplicity of the metric system.

For example, the metric unit of energy is the Joule (J).  The Joule is a combination of kg, m, and s:

\SI{1}{J}=\SI{1}{kg.m^2/s^2}

Prefixes / Powers of 10

Metric prefixes represent powers of 10.

Metric prefixes found in Gen Chem
Prefix Abbr. Meaning Example 1 Example 2
kilo- k 1000 1 kg = 1000 g 1 g = 0.001 kg
centi- c 0.01 1 cm = 0.01 m 1 m = 100 cm
milli- m 0.001  1 mL = 0.001 L 1 L = 1000 mL
micro- μ 0.000 001 1 μg = 0.000 001 g 1 g = 1,000,000 μg

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