Geotechnical Engineering

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A NOTE ON S.I. UNITS

S.I. is the abbreviation by which the System Internationale d’Unités (International System of
Units) is known. S.I. a ‘coherent’ system—the product or quotient of two or more of its units is
the unit of the resultant quantity.


The base units of SI System are as follows:


Length


The metre is the length equal to 1,650,763.73 wavelengths in vacuum of the radiation corre-
sponding to the transition between the levels 2p^10 and 5d^5 of the Krypton-86 atom.


Mass


The Kilogram is the unit of mass; it is equal to the mass of the international prototype of the
kilogram.


Time


The second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the tran-
sition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the Caesium-133 atom.


Intensity of Electric Current


The ampere is that constant current which, if maintained in two straight parallel conductors
of infinite length, of negligible circular corss-section and placed one metre apart in vacuum,
would produce between these conductors a force equal to 2 × 10–7 newton per metre of length.


Thermodynamic Temperature


The Kelvin, unit of thermodynamic temperature, is the fraction 1/273.16 of the thermody-
namic temperature of the triple point of water.


Luminous Intensity


The candela is the luminous intensity, in the perpendicular direction of a surface of 1/600,000
square metres of a black body at the temperature of freezing platinum under a pressure of
101,325 newtons per square metre.


Amount of Substance


The mole is the amount of substance of a system which contains as many elementary units as
there are carbon atoms in 0.012 kilogramme of Carbon-12. The elementary unit must be speci-
fied and may be an atom, a molecule, an ion, an electron, a photon, or a specified group of such
entities.


APPENDIX A

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