Billionth

One billionth is the reciprocal of a billion, which means it has one of two definitions depending on whether the long scale or short scale definition is being used.[1]

Short scale

In the short (or American) scale, a billionth is equal to 0.000 000 001, or 1 x 10−9 in scientific notation or standard form. The prefix for this number is nano, and is abbreviated as "n" (for example, in electronics, one nanofarad would be written as 1 nF).[2]

Long scale

In the long (or English) scale, a billionth is equal to 0.000 000 000 001, or 1 x 10−12 in scientific notation or standard form. The prefix for this number is pico-, and is abbreviated as "p" (for example, in electronics, one picofarad would be written as 1 pF).[3]

See also

References

  1. ^ Gardner, J. W. (April 6, 1961), "How many is a billion?", Letters, New Scientist: 888.
  2. ^ Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew (2002), An Introduction to English Morphology: Words and Their Structure, Edinburgh University Press, pp. 109–110, ISBN 9780748613267.
  3. ^ Bray, Charles (2001), Dictionary of Glass: Materials and Techniques, University of Pennsylvania Press, p. 243, ISBN 9780812236194.


Preceded by
Millionth
Decimal
orders of magnitude
Succeeded by
Trillionth

This page was last updated at 2019-11-08 17:20 UTC. Update now. View original page.

All our content comes from Wikipedia and under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.


Top

If mathematical, chemical, physical and other formulas are not displayed correctly on this page, please useFirefox or Safari