PERFORM BASIC

MENSURATION

ICT 2131
 UNITS OF MEASUREMENTS

Every field of science involves taking

measurements, understanding them, and
communicating them to others. In other words,
we all have to speak the same basic language.
Whether you are a medical transcriptionist,
chemist, a physicist, a biologist, an engineer,
or even a medical doctor, you need a
consistent way of communicating size, mass,
shape, temperature, time, amount, energy,
power, and speed.
 THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM OF
UNITS (SI)
It is the metric system used in science,
industry, and medicine. Depending on your
age and geographic location, you might be
very familiar with the “imperial” system, which
includes units such as gallons, feet, miles, and
pounds. The imperial system is used for
“everyday” measurements in a few places,
such as the United States. But in most of the
world (including Europe) and in all scientific
circles, the SI system is in common use.
UNITS OF THE SI SYSTEM

There are seven base units in the SI system:

the kilogram (kg), for mass

the second (s), for time
the kelvin (K), for temperature
the ampere (A), for electric current
the mole (mol), for the amount of a substance
the candela (cd), for luminous intensity
the meter (m), for distance
It should be apparent that the move into modern
times has greatly refined the conditions of
measurement for each basic unit in the SI
system, making the measurement of, for
example, the luminous intensity of a light source
a standard measurement in every laboratory in
the world.
A light source made to produce 20 cd will be the
same regardless of whether it is made in the
United States, in the UK, or anywhere else. The
use of the SI system provides all scientists and
engineers with a common language of
measurement.
History of the SI System

The SI units of measurement have an interesting history. Over time they have
been refined for clarity and simplicity.
The meter (m), or metre, was originally defined as 1/10,000,000 of the distance
from the Earth’s equator to the North Pole measured on the circumference
through Paris. In modern terms, it is defined as the distance traveled by light in
a vacuum over a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second.
The kilogram (kg) was originally defined as the mass of a liter (i.e., of one
thousandth of a cubic meter). It is currently defined as the mass of a platinum-
iridium kilogram sample maintained by the Bureau International des Poids et
Mesures in Sevres, France.
The second (s) was originally based on a “standard day” of 24 hours, with each
hour divided in 60 minutes and each minute divided in 60 seconds. However, we
now know that a complete rotation of the Earth actually takes 23 hours, 56
minutes, and 4.1 seconds. Therefore, a second is now defined as the duration
of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition
between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom.
The ampere (A) is a measure of the amount of electric charge passing a point
in an electric circuit per unit time. 6.241×1018 electrons, or one coulomb, per
second constitutes one ampere.
The kelvin (K) is the unit of the thermodynamic temperature
scale. This scale starts at 0 K. The incremental size of the kelvin
is the same as that of the degree on the Celsius (also called
centigrade) scale. The kelvin is the fraction 1/273.16 of the
thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water (exactly
0.01 °C, or 32.018 °F).
The mole (mol) is a number that relates molecular or atomic
mass to a constant number of particles. It is defined as the
amount of a substance that contains as many elementary entities
as there are atoms in 0.012 kg of carbon-12.
The candela (cd) was so named to refer to “candlepower” back in
the days when candles were the most common source of
illumination (because so many people used candles, their
properties were standardized). Now, with the prevalence of
incandescent and fluorescent light sources, the candela is defined
as the luminous intensity in a given direction of a source that
emits monochromatic radiation of
frequency 540⋅1012540⋅1012 Hertz and that has a radiant
intensity in that direction of 1/683 watts per steradian.
SI UNIT PREFIXES
The basic SI units can be expressed as fractions and multiples of basic units by
using a set of simple prefixes.

Unit name Unit symbol Quantity name Quantity symbol Dimension symbol

meter m length l, x, r L

kilogram[1] kg mass m M

second s time t T

ampere A electric current I I

thermodynamic
kelvin K T Θ
temperature

candela cd luminous intensity Iv J

mole mol amount of substance n N

There are 20 accepted prefixes. A prefix may be used to identify
multiples of the original unit or fractions of the original unit. For
example, kilo- denotes a multiple of a thousand, so there are one
thousand meters in a kilometer. Milli- denotes a thousandth;
therefore, there are one thousand millimeters in a meter.
Keep in mind that prefixes should never be combined.
Thus a millionth of a meter is a micrometer, not a mill
millimeter, and a millionth of a kilogram is a milligram,
not a microkilogram.

In older usage, a micron (a measurement often

encountered in physics and engineering) is the same as
a micrometer, 10-6 meters. Another older form of usage,
the millimicron, is one thousandth of a micrometer, or 1
thousandth of 10-6 meters, or 10-9 meter, now called a
nanometer. While these older terms are not in common
usage, they are often encountered in older publications,
and knowing their modern equivalents is an advantage.
VOLUME AND DENSITY
Density and volume are two common measurements in chemistry.

The properties of a material may be described in many ways. Any

amount of any substance will have a volume. If you have two
containers of water that are different sizes, they each hold a
different amount, or volume, of water. The unit for volume is a unit
derived from the SI unit of length and is not a fundamental SI
measurement.
If two water samples have different volumes, they still share a
common measurement: the density. Density is another
measurement derived from SI basic units. The density of a
material is defined as its mass per unit volume. In this example,
each volume of water is different and therefore has a specific and
unique mass. The mass of water is expressed in grams (g) or
kilograms (kg), and the volume is measured in liters (L), cubic
centimeters (cm3), or milliliters (mL). Density is calculated by the
dividing the mass by the volume, so that density is measured as
units of mass/volume, often g/mL. If both water samples are at the
same temperature, their densities should be identical, regardless
of the samples’ volume.
VOLUME
Volume is the amount of space occupied by an object and is the
area times the length; for a cube, this becomes length3. The
common SI unit of volume is the cubic meter (m 3). Because the
cubic meter is a large quantity in chemical laboratory
measurements, the cubic decimeter (dm 3) and cubic centimeter
(cm3 or cc) are used. The common name for the cubic decimeter
is the liter (L) and for the cubic centimeter is the milliliter (mL).
Therefore:
1 m3 = 1,000 dm3 = 1,000,000 cm3 and 1 dm3 = 1 L = 1,000 mL.
DENSITY

Density is defined as the mass per unit volume of any substance;

using base units, this is measured as kilogram per cubic meter
(kg/m3). This is too large a unit for the laboratory. Thus, density is
typically expressed in grams per milliliter (g/mL) or grams per
cm3 (g/cm3) for liquids and solids and grams per liter (g/L) for
gases. It is extremely important to ensure that units are
compatible; that is, the units are not mixed SI or SI-English units.
Dimensional
Analysis is the process used to assure that different units of
measurement are not used. For example, consider the rectangle
shown in Figure 1. Before its area can be calculated, the English
unit must be converted to a metric unit or vice versa.
TEMPERATURE
The Kelvin (K, which is read as "Kelvin" and not degrees Kelvin) is
the base SI unit of temperature. The Kelvin, like the more
commonly used degree Celsius (°C), is one-hundredth of the
interval between the freezing and boiling points of water at
atmospheric pressure. They differ in the values assigned to these
points; therefore

K = °C + 273.15 and °C = K −
273.15.
A temperature of −273.15
°C or 0.00 K is absolute zero.
LENGTH
The base unit of length is the meter (m), which technically is
defined as the distance light travels through a vacuum in
1/299,792,458 second, a complex standard. For most
measurements in a chemical laboratory, the meter is a large unit.
The derived units of centimeter (cm), millimeter (mm, about the
thickness of a new US dime), micrometer or micron (μm)
and nanometer (nm) are used. Using the values in Table 2:

1 m = 100 cm = 1000 mm = 1,000,000 μm

= 1,000,000,000 nm
OR 1 m = 102 cm = 103 mm = 106 μm
= 109 nm.
MASS
The measure of the amount of matter is the mass, for which the
kilogram (kg) is the base unit. Again, the base unit is too large for
most measurements in a chemical laboratory, so the derived units
of gram (g, about half the mass of a new US penny), milligram
(mg) and microgram (μg)
are used. Although we often use mass and weight
interchangeably, they are different. Mass is the amount of matter;
weight is the force exerted upon this mass by gravity. You will, for
example, have the same mass on Earth as in outer space, but you
will be weightless in outer space, in the absence of gravity. The
confusion is exacerbated because mass units are commonly used
in the metric and SI systems, but English measurements are
generally expressed in pounds, a unit of weight. The English unit
of mass is a slug; the SI unit of force is the Newton. Using the
values in Table 2:

1 kg = 1,000 g = 1,000,000 mg = 1,000,000,000 μg

OR 1 kg = 103 g = 106 mg = 109 μg
.
MOLE
The mole (mol) is the SI standard measure of the amount of a
substance (matter that cannot be further broken down or purified by
physical means; that is, elements and compounds). A mole is the
same number of "particles" (atoms, molecules, ions, etc.) as there
are atoms in 12.00 g of carbon; more familiarly, this can be shown to
be Avogadro's number: 6.022 × 1023. Hence
1 mole of H = 6.022 × 1023 atoms of H
1 mole of H2O = 6.022 × 1023 molecules of H2O
1 mole of pennies = 6.022 × 1023 pennies (more than the national
debt).
Since Avogadro's number is cumbersome to work with in a
laboratory, we also define the mole for an element or a compound as
its mass in grams. Therefore:

1 mole of H = 6.022 × 1023 atoms of H = 1.0079 g H (the molar mass)

1 mole of H2O = 6.022 × 1023 molecules of H2O = 18.015 g H2O (the
molar mass).
 SI DERIVED UNITS
Any unit that is not a base unit is a derived unit. Derived units may be formed by
using the Greek prefixes with the base units, as shown in the table below .
Derived units are also formed by combining two or more of the base units.