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Units & Measurements

	Ampere - Decibel
	Fahrenheit - Kelvin
	Kilogram - Pascal
	Phon - Watt

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Ampere

(A or amp) The SI base unit of electric current.
Definition: Two parallel conductors, infinitely long and having negligible cross section should be placed 1 meter apart in a perfect vacuum. One ampere is the current that creates between them a force of 0.2 microNewton per meter of length.
One ampere represents a current flow of 1 coulomb of charge per second.
One ampere of current results from a potential distribution of 1 volt per ohm of resistance, or from a power production rate of 1 watt per volt of potential.
The unit is known informally as the amp, but A is its official symbol and is named for the French physicist AndrÃ©-Marie AmpÃ¨re.
See also System International.

Further Reading:

Basics:

How Many? A Dictionary of Units of MeasurementÂ© Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Wednesday, 21 March 2001 by www.unc.edu

Angstrom

(Ã…* or A*) A unit used to measure the wavelength of X-rays.
Definition: 0.1 nanometer or 10^-10 meter.

Bit

The basic unit of information.
Definition: The smallest unit of information in the storage on a computer. Eight bits are grouped together to form one byte, additional start and stop bit.
Larger units are
kilobyte (kB) = 1 000 bytes (computer storage 1024 bytes)
megabyte (MB) = 1 000 kB (computer storage 1024 kB)

Celsius

A metric unit of temperature.
Definition: One degree is 1/273.16 of the difference between the triple point of water (at exactly 0.01 Â°C) and absolute zero.
The triple point of water is the temperature at which water can exist simultaneously in the gaseous, liquid, and solid states. Absolute zero is the temperature at which all molecular motion discontinues.
The Celsius temperature scale is named for the Swedish astronomer and physicist Anders Celsius (1701-1744), who used a similar scale.
See also Kelvin.

Further Reading:

Basics:

Essentials of the SI

by physics.nist.gov

News & More:

Wednesday, 21 March 2001 by www.unc.edu

Decibel

(dB) A customary logarithmic measure most commonly used (in various ways) for measuring sound. Decibel is a way to express the ratio of two sound intensities: dB=10log10I1/I2 being I1 the reference. If one sound is 1 bel (10 decibel) 'louder' than another, this means the louder sound is 10 times louder than the fainter one. A difference of 20 decibel corresponds to an increase of 10 x 10 or 100 times in intensity.
The intensity of ultrasound decreases during the propagation and is measured in db/cm.
For sound pressure (the pressure exerted by the sound waves) 0 decibel equals 20 microPascal (ÂµPa), and for ultrasonic power 0 decibel sometimes equals 1 picoWatt.
See also dB/dt, Phon, and Logarithms.