Robot Building for Beginners, Third Edition

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

CHAPTER 5 ■ NUMBERS AND UNITS


To avoid errors, the number of digits in long numbers is usually reduced in a standardized way.
Referring to Table 5-1, instead of writing 10,000,000, it can be reduced to 10 M.

10,000,000 = 10 million = 10 mega = 10 M


Figure 5-1. Quick! How large of a number? 158 million? 15 million? 1.5 million?


Table 5-1. Metric Powers of a Thousand


Amount Multiplier Prefix Abbreviation


trillion 1,000,000,000,000 tera- uppercase T


billion 1,000,000,000 giga- uppercase G


million 1,000,000 mega- uppercase M


thousand 1,000 kilo- lowercase k


thousandth 0.001 milli- lowercase m


millionth 0.000001 micro- Greek m or lowercase u


billionth 0.000000001 nano- lowercase n


trillionth 0.000000000001 pico- lowercase p


Notice that the million multiplier has six zeros (see Table 5-1) and we removed six zeros from our
original number. So, the M is just taking the place of the six zeros we chopped off.
If, for some reason, it is helpful to retain some of the zeros (such as for comparison’s sake), a smaller
multiplier can be used:


10,000,000 = 10,000 thousand = 10,000 kilo = 10,000 k


Notice that the thousand multiplier has three zeros (see Table 5-1) and we removed only three zeros
from our original number. So, the k is just taking the place of the three zeros we chopped off.

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