Now it's time to learn about the most boring part of chemistry. Frankly I'm satisfied with the use of "this much" and "this wide" as standard units of measurement, but SOMEONE seems to disagree with my choice.
A standard system of measurements is crucial to the uniform study of science as a whole. This allows all scientist to compare results and replicate the experiments of their peers, using the same language. The scientific community uses the SI-
METRIC!
...system. The SI system is based on the gram, meter, and liter and other scientific measures such as the mole, joule, and kelvin (though celcius is widely used). SI is DIFFERENT from metric in that it ecompasses the entire set of scientific measurements. Initially, we will only concern ourselves with the liter, gram, meter, and celcius/kelvin, and save the other units for later discussion.
As everyone learned in elementary school, the meter, liter, and gram all have a multiude of prefixes that go along with them. These prefixes correspond to a power of ten to which the unit is raised. For example: a decameter is 10 meters, and a kilometer is 1000 of the little guys.
| Prefix | Symbol | Meaning | Exponent |
| Exa | E | 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 | 10e18 |
| Peta | P | 1,000,000,000,000,000 | 10e15 |
| Tera | T | 1,000,000,000,000 | 10e12 |
| Giga | G | 1,000,000,000 | 10e9 |
| mega | M | 1,000,000 | 10e6 |
| kilo | k | 1,000 | 10e3 |
| hecto | h | 100 | 10e2 |
| deka | da | 10 | 10e1 |
| deci | d | 0.1 | 10e-1 |
| centi | c | 0.01 | 10e-2 |
| milli | m | 0.001 | 10e-3 |
| micro | u | 0.000001 | 10e-6 |
| nano | n | 0.000000001 | 10e-9 |
| pico | p | 0.000000000001 | 10e-12 |
| f | femto | 0.000000000000001 | 10e-15 |
| atto | a | 0.000000000000000001 | 10e-18 |