Prefix Multipliers:
At times the use of standard units is not convenient or unwieldy as a specific unit is very large or small compared with the magnitudes of phenomena generally encountered in real life. We have previously seen some good illustrations: the farad, the hertz, and the henry. Scientists use prefix multipliers that can be attached in front of the words symbolizing units to express power-of-10 multiples of those units.
In common, the prefix multipliers variety in increments of 103, or 3 orders of magnitude, all the mode down to 10-24 (i.e., septillionths) and all the way up to 1024 (i.e., septillions). This is a range of 48 orders of magnitude! It is not easy to think of an illustrative illustration to explain the hugeness of this ratio. The table which is shown below outlines these prefix multipliers and what they stand for.
Table: Prefix Multipliers and their Abbreviations
PROBLEM:
Assume that you are told that a computer's microprocessor has a clock frequency of 5 GHz. What is the frequency in hertz?
SOLUTION:
From the table shown above, observe that the gigahertz (GHz) symbolizes 109 Hz. Therefore 5 GHz is equivalent to 5 x 109 Hz, or 5 billion Hz.