Unit, Standars and SI System

The measurement of any quantity is made relative to a particular standard or unit, and this
unit must be specified along with the numerical value of the quantity. For example, we can
measure length in British units such as inches, feet, or miles, or in the metric system in
centimeters, meters, or kilometers. To specify that the length of a particular object is 18.6 is
insufficient. The unit must be given, because 18.6meters is very different from 18.6inches or
18.6millimeters. For any unit we use, such as the meter for distance or the second for time,
we need to define a standard which defines exactly how long one meter or one second is. It is
important that standards be chosen that are readily reproducible so that anyone needing to
make a very accurate measurement can refer to the standard in the laboratory and
communicate with other people.

Length

The first truly international standard was the meter (abbreviated m) established as the
standard of length by the French Academy of Sciences in the 1790s. The standard meter was
originally chosen to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the Earth’s equator to either
pole,† and a platinum rod to represent this length was made. (One meter is, very roughly, the
distance from the tip of your nose to the tip of your finger, with arm and hand stretched out
horizontally.) In 1889, the meter was defined more precisely as the distance between two
finely engraved marks on a particular bar of platinum–iridium alloy. In 1960, to provide even
greater precision and reproducibility, the meter was redefined as 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of
a particular orange light emitted by the gas krypton-86. In 1983 the meter was again
redefined, this time in terms of the speed of light (whose best measured value in terms of the
older definition of the meter was with an uncertainty of ). The new definition reads: “The
meter is the length of path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of a
second.”‡ British units of length (inch, foot, mile) are now defined in terms of the meter. The
inch (in.) is defined as exactly 2.54 centimeters (cm; ). Other conversion factors are given in
the Table on the inside of the front cover of this book. Table 1–1 presents some typical
lengths, from very small to very large, rounded off to the nearest power of 10. See also Fig.
1–8. [Note that the abbreviation for inches (in.) is the only one with a period, to distinguish it
from the word “in”.] Time The standard unit of time is the second (s). For many years, the
second

Time

Time The standard unit of time is the second (s). For many years, the second was defined as of a
mean solar day The standard second is now defined more precisely in terms of the frequency of
radiation emitted by cesium atoms when they pass between two particular states. [Specifically, one
second is defined as the time required for 9,192,631,770 oscillations of this radiation.] There are, by
definition, 60 s in one minute (min) and 60 minutes in one hour (h). Table 1–2 presents a range of
measured time intervals, rounded off to the nearest power of 10.

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Mass

The standard unit of mass is the kilogram (kg). The standard mass is a particular platinum–
iridium cylinder, kept at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris,
France, whose mass is defined as exactly 1 kg. A range of masses is presented in Table 1–3.
[For practical purposes, 1 kg weighs about 2.2 pounds on Earth.] When dealing with atoms
and molecules, we usually use the unified atomic mass unit (u or amu). In terms of the
kilogram, The definitions of other standard units for other quantities will be given as we
encounter them in later Chapters. (Precise values of this and other useful numbers are given
inside the front cover.)

Unit Prefixes

In the metric system, the larger and smaller units are defined in multiples of 10 from the
standard unit, and this makes calculation particularly easy. Thus 1 kilometer (km) is 1000 m,
1 centimeter is 1 millimeter (mm) is or and so on. The prefixes “centi-,” “kilo-,” and others
are listed in Table 1–4 and can be applied not only to units of length but to units of volume,
mass, or any other unit. For example, a centiliter (cL) is (L), and a kilogram (kg) is 1000
grams (g). An 8.2-megapixel camera has a detector with 8,200,000 pixels (individual “picture
elements”). In common usage, is called 1 micron.

Systems of Units

When dealing with the laws and equations of physics it is very important to use a consistent
set of units. Several systems of units have been in use over the years. Today the most
important is the Système International (French for International System), which is
abbreviated SI. In SI units, the standard of length is the meter, the standard for time is the
second, and the standard for mass is the kilogram. This system used to be called the MKS
(meter-kilogram-second) system. A second metric system is the cgs system, in which the
centimeter, gram, and second are the standard units of length, mass, and time, as abbreviated
in the title. The British engineering system (although more used in the U.S. than Britain) has
as its standards the foot for length, the pound for force, and the second for time. We use SI
units almost exclusively in this book.

Base vs. Derived

Quantities Physical quantities can be divided into two categories: base quantities and derived
quantities. The corresponding units for these quantities are called base units and derived
units. A base quantity must be defined in terms of a standard. Scientists, in the interest of
simplicity, want the smallest number of base quantities possible consistent with a full
description of the physical world. This number turns out to be seven, and those used in the SI
are given in Table 1–5.

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TABEL 1-5 SI Base Quantities and Units

Quantity Unit Unit Abbreviration

All other quantities can be defined in terms of these seven base quantities,† and hence are
referred to as derived quantities. An example of a derived quantity is speed, which is defined
as distance divided by the time it takes to travel that distance. A Table inside the front cover
lists many derived quantities and their units in terms of base units. To define any quantity,
whether base or derived, we can specify a rule or procedure, and this is called an operational
definition.

Vektors
Vektors and scalars

the term velocity refers not only to how fast an object is moving but also to its direction. A
quantity such as velocity, which has direction as well as magnitude, is a vector quantity.
Other quantities that are also vectors are displacement, force, and momentum. However,
many quantities have no direction associated with them, such as mass, time, and temperature.
They are specified completely by a number and units. Such quantities are called scalar
quantities. Drawing a diagram of a particular physical situation is always helpful in physics,
and this is especially true when dealing with vectors. On a diagram, each vector is
represented by an arrow. The arrow is always drawn so that it points in the direction of the
vector quantity it represents. The length of the arrow is drawn proportional to the magnitude
of the vector quantity. For example, in Fig. 3–1, green arrows have been drawn representing
the velocity of a car at various places as it rounds a curve. The magnitude of the velocity at
each point can be read off Fig. 3–1 by measuring the length of the corresponding arrow and
using the scale shown When we write the symbol for a vector, we will always use boldface
type, with a tiny arrow over the symbol. Thus for velocity we write If we are concerned only
with the magnitude of the vector, we will write simply v, in italics, as we do for other
symbols.

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Addition of Vectors Graphical Methods

Because vectors are quantities that have direction as well as magnitude, they must be added
in a special way. In this Chapter, we will deal mainly with displacement vectors, for which
we now use the symbol and velocity vectors, But the results will apply for other vectors we
encounter later. We use simple arithmetic for adding scalars. Simple arithmetic can also be
used for adding vectors if they are in the same direction. For example, if a person walks 8 km
east one day, and 6 km east the next day, the person will be east of the point of origin. We say
that the net or resultant displacement is 14 km to the east (Fig. 3–2a). If, on the other hand,
the person walks 8 km east on the first day, and 6 km west (in the reverse direction) on the
second day, then the person will end up 2 km from the origin (Fig. 3–2b), so the resultant
displacement is 2 km to the east. In this case, the resultant displacement is obtained by
subtraction: But simple arithmetic cannot be used if the two vectors are not along the same
line. For example, suppose a person walks 10.0 km east and then walks 5.0 km north. These
displacements can be represented on a graph in which the positive y axis points north and the
positive x axis points east, Fig. 3–3. On this graph, we draw an arrow, labeled to represent the
10.0-km displacement to the east. Then we draw a second arrow, to represent the 5.0-km
displacement to the north. Both vectors are drawn to scale, as in Fig.

After taking this walk, the person is now 10.0 km east and 5.0 km north of the point of origin.
The resultant displacement is represented by the arrow labeled in Fig. 3–3. (The subscript R
stands for resultant.) Using a ruler and a protractor, you can measure on this diagram that the
person is 11.2 km from the origin at an angle north of east. In other words, the resultant
displacement vector has a magnitude of 11.2 km and makes an angle with the positive x axis.
The magnitude (length) of can also be obtained using the theorem of Pythagoras in this case,
because and form a right triangle with as the hypotenuse. Thus

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