Common Prefixes
Common Prefixes
Prefixes are commonly used in our daily lives to denote certain powers of \(10\).
For example, an external hard disk with a capacity of \(512\) gigabytes or a company earn \(2\) billion dollars.
The following table lists some of the common prefixes and their symbols used for very large and very small numbers.
Powers of \(10\) | Name | SI Prefix | Symbol | Numerical Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
\({{10}^{12}}\) | trillion | tera- | T | \(1\,000\,000\,000\,000\) |
\({{10}^{9}}\) | billion | giga- | G | \(1\,000\,000\,000\) |
\({{10}^{6}}\) | million | mega- | M | \(1\,000\,000\) |
\({{10}^{3}}\) | thousand | kilo- | k | \(1\,000\) |
\({{10}^{-3}}\) | thousandth | milli- | m | \(0.001\) |
\({{10}^{-6}}\) | millionth | micro- | \(\mu \) | \(0.000\,001\) |
\({{10}^{-9}}\) | billionth | nano- | n | \(0.000\,000\,001\) |
\({{10}^{-12}}\) | trillionth | pico- | p | \(0.000\,000\,000\,001\) |
The exponents in this selected table are multiples of 3. Other SI prefixes include hecto \((10^2)\), deca \((10)\), deci \((10^{-1})\) and centi \((10^{-2})\).
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