[sdiy] What does it mean?

[John L Marshall]

The international unit is used in place of the decimal point. for example:
1k3=1.3k, 2M2=2.2M, 2u2=2.2uF, 4n7=4700pF=0.0047uF.

I'm not sure why those of us in the USA don't use the international unit
nano for capacitors. Just habit I guess. Years ago we didn't use pico
either. We used micro-micro (uu). But then frequency was measured in cycles
per second rather than Hertz. Conductance was measured in Mhos (ohms
backwards) rather than Siemens. Watt-Second rather than Joules.

Take care reading large international numbers in the USA the comma is a
separator and the period is a decimal point but elsewhere the period may be
the separator and a comma the decimal point.


----- Original Message -----
From: Larry <ltroth at socal.rr.com>
To: <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2001 6:12 PM
Subject: [sdiy] What does it mean?


> Hello All
>
> Here is the silly question of the week.
>
> I have been seeing ratings for resistors like 1k3 or 2M2.  How do you read
> these?  I'm used to100K or 10M.
>
> I've seen similar ratings, such as 2u2 or 4n7 on capacitors.  Again, how
do
> you read these?
>
> Sorry about the level of such a newbie question, but I haven't paid much
> attention to parts lists and schematics for the last 20 years, and in the
> 70's and 80's I never saw part ratings like these,
>
> Larry
>