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Micro-

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This article is about the SI prefix. For other uses, see Micro (disambiguation).
Look up micro- in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Micro- (Greek letter μ or legacy micro symbol µ) is a unit prefix in the metric system denoting a 6th. Confirmed in 1960, the prefix comes from the Greek μικρό (mikró), meaning "small".

The symbol for the prefix comes from the Greek letter μ (mu). It is the only SI prefix which uses a character not from the Latin alphabet. "mc" is commonly used as a prefix when the character "μ" is not available; for example, "mcg" commonly denotes a microgram (with some ambiguity, in that mcg could also be read as a micrigram, i.e. 10−14 g, albeit the "micri-" prefix is non-standard, not widely known, and now considered obsolete). Also the letter u instead of μ is allowed by one of the ISO documents.[1]

Examples:

SI prefixes
Prefix Base 10 Decimal Adoption
[nb 1]
Name Symbol
quetta Q 1030 1000000000000000000000000000000 2022[3]
ronna R 1027 1000000000000000000000000000
yotta Y 1024 1000000000000000000000000 1991
zetta Z 1021 1000000000000000000000
exa E 1018 1000000000000000000 1975[4]
peta P 1015 1000000000000000
tera T 1012 1000000000000 1960
giga G 109 1000000000
mega M 106 1000000 1873
kilo k 103 1000 1795
hecto h 102 100
deca da 101 10
— — 100 1 —
deci d 10−1 0.1 1795
centi c 10−2 0.01
milli m 10−3 0.001
micro μ 10−6 0.000001 1873
nano n 10−9 0.000000001 1960
pico p 10−12 0.000000000001
femto f 10−15 0.000000000000001 1964
atto a 10−18 0.000000000000000001
zepto z 10−21 0.000000000000000000001 1991
yocto y 10−24 0.000000000000000000000001
ronto r 10−27 0.000000000000000000000000001 2022[3]
quecto q 10−30 0.000000000000000000000000000001
Notes
  1. ^ Prefixes adopted before 1960 already existed before SI. The introduction of the CGS system was in 1873.

Symbol encoding in character sets

The official symbol for the SI prefix micro- is a Greek lowercase mu (μ).[5] For reasons stemming from its design, there are two different characters in Unicode, which appear slightly different in some fonts, although most fonts use the same glyph. The micro sign (µ) is encoded in the "Latin-1 Supplement" range identical to ISO/IEC 8859-1 (since 1987), at U+00B5 (Alt+0181),[6] residing at this code point also in DEC MCS (since 1983) and ECMA-94 (since 1985). The Greek letter (μ) is encoded in the Greek range at U+03BC (Alt+956). According to The Unicode Consortium, the Greek letter character is preferred,[7] but implementations must recognize the micro sign as well. This distinction also occurs in some legacy code pages, notably Windows-1253.

In circumstances in which only the Latin alphabet is available, ISO 2955 (1974,[8] 1983[9]), DIN 66030 (Vornorm 1973;[10] 1980,[11][12] 2002[13]) and BS 6430 (1983) allow the prefix μ to be substituted by the letter u (or even U, if lowercase letters are not available), as, for example, in um for μm, or uF for μF. Similar, capacitor values according to the RKM code defined in IEC 60062 (IEC 62) (since 1952), EN 60062, DIN 40825 (1973), BS 1852 (1974), IS 8186 (1976) etc. can be written as 4u7 (or 4U7) instead of 4μ7 if the Greek letter μ is not available.

Other abbreviating conventions

In some health care institutions, house rules deprecate the standard symbol for microgram, "μg", in prescribing or chart recording, because of the risk of giving an incorrect dose because of the misreading of poor handwriting.[14] The two alternatives are to abbreviate as "mcg"[14] or to write out "microgram" in full (see also List of abbreviations used in medical prescriptions). But this deprecation, focused on avoiding incorrect dosing in contexts where handwriting is often present, does not extend to all health-care contexts and institutions (for example, some clinical laboratories' reports adhere to it, whereas others do not[14]), and in physical sciences academia, "μg" remains the sole official abbreviation.

In medical data exchange according to the Health Level 7 (HL7) standard, the μ can be replaced by u as well.[15]

See also

References

  1. ^ ISO 2955, table 2.
  2. ^ Biology by Campbell & Reece, tenth edition. Ch. 6 "A Tour of the Cell". p. 98.
  3. ^ a b "On the extension of the range of SI prefixes". 18 November 2022. Retrieved 5 February 2023.
  4. ^ "Metric (SI) Prefixes". NIST.
  5. ^ Prefixes of the International System of Units, International Bureau of Weights and Measures (page visited on 9 May 2016).
  6. ^ (Unicode 1.0, 1991)
  7. ^ Unicode Technical Report #25
  8. ^ ISO 2955-1974: lnformation processing - Representations of SI and other units for use in systems with limited character sets (1st ed.). 1974.
  9. ^ "Table 2". ISO 2955-1983: lnformation processing - Representations of SI and other units for use in systems with limited character sets (PDF) (2nd ed.). 1983-05-15. Retrieved 2016-12-14. [1]
  10. ^ Vornorm DIN 66030 [Preliminary standard DIN 66030] (in German). January 1973.
  11. ^ DIN 66030: Darstellungen von Einheitennamen in Systemen mit beschränktem Schriftzeichenvorrat (in German) (1st ed.). 1980.
  12. ^ "Neue Normen für die Informationsverarbeitung". Computerwoche (in German). 1981-01-09. Archived from the original on 2016-12-14. Retrieved 2016-12-14.
  13. ^ DIN 66030:2002-05 - Informationstechnik - Darstellung von Einheitennamen in Systemen mit beschränktem Schriftzeichenvorrat [Information technology - Representation of SI and other units in systems with limited character sets] (in German). Beuth Verlag [de]. May 2002. Retrieved 2016-12-14.
  14. ^ a b c Burtis, Carl A.; Ashwood, Edward R.; Bruns, David E. (2012), Tietz Textbook of Clinical Chemistry and Molecular Diagnostics (5th ed.), ISBN 978-1455759422.
  15. ^ "Commonly Used UCUM Codes for Healthcare Units". HL7 Deutschland e.V. Retrieved 2015-11-21.
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