AII-1
APPENDIX II
LAWS OF EXPONENTS
The International Symbols Committee has adopted prefixes for denoting decimal multiples of units.
The National Bureau of Standards has followed the recommendations of this committee, and has adopted
the following list of prefixes:
Numbers
Powers
of ten
Prefixes
Symbols
1,000,000,000,000
1012
tera
T
1,000,000,000
109
giga
G
1,000,000
106
mega
M
1,000
103
kilo
k
100
102
hecto
h
10
10
deka
da
.1
10-1
deci
d
.01
10-2
centi
c
.001
10-3
milli
m
.000001
10 -6
micro
u
.000000001
10-9
nano
n
.000000000001
10-12
Pico
p
.000000000000001
10-15
femto
f
.000000000000000001
10-18
Atto
a
To multiply like (with same base) exponential quantities, add the exponents. In the language of
algebra the rule is am a
n
= am+n
To divide exponential quantities, subtract the exponents. In the language of algebra the rule is
